Srinivas Ramprasad, the Chief Executive Officer of Persept Solar, a Bangalore-based solar firm with German technology, said here on Thursday that his company has developed a business model for the effective use of solar power. The model, he says, will be an answer to the problem of huge initial capital investment and land availability.
He was addressing an awareness meeting on the effective harnessing of solar power,organised by the Madurai District Tiny and Small Scale Industries Association (Maditssia), Tamil Nadu Small and Tiny Industries Association , and FNF Service Centre, Chennai. He said the company would bear the capital expenditure for the installation of solar plant, if the industrial unit enters into a short-term or long-term power purchase agreement with the company and has a minimum requirement of more than 250 KW.
Unreliable grid system
The issue of land could be overcome by making use of the industrial unit’s roof tops. As India has a huge potential to exploit solar power, the model would enable industries reduce dependency on expensive diesel-powered generators and unreliable grid system. He further said the stipulated minimum requirement of 250 KW could be met by the industrial units through a cluster approach.
While the Central regulations allowed this kind of third party private power sales, it has now been restricted by the Tamil Nadu Government, and negotiations are on to relax the norm by the industry bodies. The business model would help industries have a fixed power tariff for 10-5 years as the cost of Government-supplied power will only increase in the future as subsidies are getting eliminated. The cost of per unit of solar power will be lower than the power generated from diesel-powered generators.