Monday, August 26, 2013: The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, India has provided $61.9 Million (Rs.399 crore) in subsidies meant for off-grid solar photovoltaic (PV) projects in the last fiscal year through National Solar Mission (NSM) along with $4.24 Million (Rs.27.4 crore). Off-grid PV and solar thermal programs of NSM have been in existence since three years. All these years, the agency has offered funding to projects in minimum 24 states.
Through a separate report to Lok Sabha, MNRE stated that it has set up 826kW of microgrid-based PV plants in 40 villages in four states. The state of Jammu and Kashmir sports nearly half of the microgrid PV capacity with 14 off-grid PV plants totaling 454kW. Around 12 plants are there in Jharkhand generating 180kW of electricity.
Under the remote village electrification program, MNRE has electrified 3,568 villages in 21 states. This is stated in its reports. Subsidy of $4.24 Million is meant for solar thermal projects in 18 states for the year. Uttarakhand has received the lion’s share of $564,000 (Rs 3.64 crore) ad other eight states received minimum $310,000 (Rs.2 crore).
According to Mercom Capital (Austin, Texas, U.S.), MNRE has backed 132 MW of off-grid PV installations till date and out of this, 92 MW was supported by a separate NSM sub-program, the Rooftop PV and Small Solar Power Generation Program (RPSSGP). Country’s National Solar Mission has set a target of 20 GW of grid-tied PV and 2 GW of off-grid PV by 2022.
