New Delhi: The ministry of new and renewable energy has issued draft guidelines for the one-stop mechanism for financial assistance and payment security under the Renewable Energy Services Company (RESCO) and Utility-led Aggregation (ULA) models of the rooftop solar project – ‘PM Surya Ghar—Muft Bijli Yojana’.
The RESCO model involves a renewable energy company purchasing, installing and maintaining rooftop solar systems for at least five years. The consumer pays only for the electricity generated on a tariff basis to the RESCO operator and can be compensated by the operator for roof-use rights.
Ownership of the plant can be transferred to the consumer after the project period, which is a minimum of five years. Alternatively, RESCO can enter into an agreement with a distribution company (discom) for the sale of generated power to the grid under a power purchase agreement.
In the utility-driven asset model, a state-owned distributor owns the rooftop solar systems for the project period of at least five years. After that, ownership is transferred to the household.
A grid-connected rooftop solar energy system linked to a dedicated electricity connection from the local electricity company, including installations on the roof, terrace, balcony or on elevated structures, is eligible for financial support from the central government.
Installations using metering mechanisms such as group net metering and virtual net metering are also eligible for financial support from the central government.
The draft guidelines state that the objectives of the standards include establishing “the implementation mechanism for supporting installations through RESCO and ULA models for rooftop solar for eligible consumer categories.”
“The rooftop solar installation may include additional technology components such as small wind hybrids, battery storage, solar tracking systems, etc. However, the CFA (central financial assistance) calculation will be based on the CFA structure under the scheme based on the capacity of the solar modules installed in the system,” the report said.
Households with existing solar systems are not eligible for RESCO, ULA
It was further stated that households with existing rooftop solar systems are not eligible for the PM Surya Ghar programme under the RESCO and ULA models.
Furthermore, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has, under the Payment Security Mechanism, a corpus of ₹100 crore to ensure payment security.
The payment security mechanism that would be managed and governed by the National Programme Implementation Agency. The draft guidelines noted that the proposals for a utility-led aggregation model, the utility can access the payment security mechanism to provide payment security for projects in which RESCO partners are contracted, through an open transparent bidding process for tariff discovery.
“Under this arrangement, the RESCO selected by the ULA contributes to the PSM Corpus through a one-time PSM fee of ₹2000/installation to be carried out by it under the ULA.”
The ministry has requested comments and suggestions on the guidelines by September 17.
The union cabinet has the ₹75,000 crore rooftop solar project will benefit 10 million families by February this year.
