The Colour of the Sun is Blue

Nothing exemplifies the mismanagement of development in India more than the disaster in implementation of Solar Energy. Especially decentralised solar energy. When we first set out to implement roof top solar in our office in Indore a few years back we found that the big corporate vendors like Tata BP Solar not only quoted exorbitant rates but also were not interested in customised solutions to suit the needs of the customer. They had standard units and one had to take them. So I decided to source the various components on my own through a local implementer. The problem was that there were no vendors of the various components like panels, inverters etc in Indore and these had to be sourced from Chennai and Mumbai. Even though the cost was much less, immediately there was the problem that the inverter malfunctioned. This meant a huge amount of correspondence and sending to and fro of the inverter before the problem was resolved. Due to the very low penetration of roof top solar systems at the time, none of these small vendors had service centres in Indore. The same problem arose when we implemented a bigger solar system on our farm in Pandutalab village.

Later, we installed a grid connected net metering system in our office in Indore. In this during the day when the solar generation is more then electricity is exported to the grid and at night when there is no solar generation then electricity is imported from the grid. This system has the advantage of obviating the need to make costly investments in battery storage.The consumer has to pay the net of import and export. We have been net electricity exporters ever since the system was installed. Yet despite a legal agreement that says that we will be paid at the average rate at which the utility buys its electricity, to date, after exporting 1500 units of electricity we have been paid only Rs 1000 whereas we should have been paid around Rs 5000. Not only this but the utility has constantly billed us wrongly and we have ended up paying around Rs 1500 instead. Several complaints have not yielded any result and so now we will have to proceed legally against the utility.

Now the inverter on the farm has once again malfunctioned. Since the vendor is in Mumbai and there is no connectivity between that city and Indore except by air due to the pandemic, it means that there is no way in which the inverter can be repaired currently. So we have now had to buy another inverter. Now there is some more penetration of solar in Indore and so we managed to purchase a solar inverter at a very reasonable price and with the assurance that it will be serviced in Indore itself if anything goes wrong.

Decentralised solar is a very effective way to reduce demand for the environmentally destructive grid electricity. However, it is more costly to install and service if something goes wrong and so there should be proactive support for this from the government. However, apart from rhetoric there is very little. We neither got the 30% subsidy we were promised for installing the net metering system nor are we being properly compensated for the electricity we are exporting into the grid. Consequently the city of Indore has just about a 1000 net metering solar connections and most of them are unhappy with the faulty billing procedures of the utility.
Less said about centralised solar parks the better. Given the very poor financial health of distribution utilities they are even less able to pay for the high cost solar electricity. So the Government has promised to subsidise this purchase. However, as in the case of decentralised solar, so also in the case of centralised solar the Government is reneging on its promise to provide a subsidy.

Implementation of solar energy is thus in a complete mess and those who have embarked on this path are in serious trouble and suffering from blues. So the colour of the sun in India is Blue. The tragedy is that even the press is not keen to publish on this. I tried to get these serious issues with solar energy implementation published in the Times of India and the Wire but without success. Nature has begun hitting back with vengeance at our ecological profligacy but it is still business as usual for the Government and the Media.