Govt's aim: Meet 20% of power demand through solar by 2027

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government on Monday unveiled a new solar policy, rolling out larger incentives and subsidies for people to have solar power systems installed at their homes and businesses through which they will be able to save on electricity costs.

- Paras Singh

Announcing the policy, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said the objective is to triple the Capital's installed solar power capacity from the current 1,500MWwhich includes 250MW from rooftop solar installations and 1,250MW from larger utilityscale solar power systems - to 4,500MW in three years.

This will lead to the Capital meeting 20% of its electricity needs via solar power by March 2027, Kejriwal said.

At the core of the scheme is are two incentives.

One, a subsidy for people to install solar systems: the government will give a subsidy of ₹2,000 per kilowatt (KW) of the cost of the system. A typical 2KW solar installation costs around ₹90,000 which, with the subsidy, would come to ₹86,000. The subsidy has been capped at a maximum of ₹10,000.

Two, people will be paid 1-3 per unit of solar energy they generate. This will effectively help reduce people's power bills.

Additionally, every unit of solar energy generated will cancel out a unit a person consumes from the power grid, effectively further reducing the power they consume from the discoms.