Bengaluru’s apartment complexes are joining hands to give a boost to solar power generation through rooftop plants. The Bangalore Apartments' Federation (BAF) has launched a city-wide initiative to get 1,000 apartment complexes to implement rooftop solar plants over the next two years.
According to the Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (Bescom), of the 1,300 consumers whose installed capacity is 98 MW, 771 are residential, totalling up to 4.58 MW capacity. The remaining are industries, poultry farms and commercial institutions, among others.
Recently, the Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission had called for feedback on the possible revision of tariffs for Solar Rooftop Photovoltaic (SRTPV) units of 1kW to 10kW capacity installed by domestic consumers in a bid to encourage more residential properties to install rooftop plants.
Kazi Zaman from BAF, which represents a hundreds of apartment complexes across the city, said, “Solar panel prices have been steadily coming down over the last few years. It has now come down to a level where it has become an extremely compelling commercial proposition for apartments, with potential return on investment in the range of 15 to 20%. Given that rooftop solar creates a significant positive impact on the environment, it is time for apartments to adopt rooftop solar on a mass scale.”
Nikhil Grover, Cluster Council Member of BAF South, spoke about the advantages of installing solar rooftop plants, drawing from experience in his apartment complex where a 96 KW capacity plant was installed two months ago. “We collected an additional corpus from all our residents to invest in this project. The result has been extremely good. The cost savings are significant,” he was quoted in a BAF release.
Muralidhar Rao, Vice President of BAF, said the State government and Bescom had been supportive in facilitating mass adoption of rooftop solar in apartments, what with the process made simpler with the removal of CEIG approval for projects less than 1 MW and launch of the Bescom online portal for rooftop solar, which simplifies the process for approval.
BAF is organising ‘BAMBOOS’ — Bengaluru Apartments Making Bengaluru Operationally Outstanding and Sustainable — on November 3. Chief Minister H. D. Kumaraswamy is expected to launch the apartment rooftop solar initiative.
