Draft norms for financial assistance, payment security under PM Surya Ghar

New Delhi: The ministry of new and renewable energy has come up with draft guidelines for the central financial assistance and payment security mechanism under the renewable energy services company (RESCO) model and utility-led aggregation (ULA) model of the rooftop solar scheme—‘PM Surya Ghar—Muft Bijli Yojana’ . 

The RESCO model sees a renewable energy company procure, install and maintain rooftop solar systems for at least five years. The consumer only pays for the electricity generated on a tariff basis to the RESCO operator and may be compensated by the operator for roof utilization rights. 

The plant ownership may be transferred to the consumer after the project period, which is a minimum of five years. Alternatively, the RESCO may enter into an arrangement with a distribution company (discom) for the sale of generated power to the grid under a power purchase agreement.

Under the utility-led asset model, a state discom owns the rooftop solar systems for the project period of at least of five years, after which the ownership is transferred to the household. 

Grid-connected rooftop solar power system tagged to a particular residential power connection of the local discom including installations on a roof, terrace and balcony or on top of elevated structures would be eligible for Central financial assistance. 

Installations under metering mechanisms such as group net metering and virtual net metering shall also be eligible for financial assistance from the Central government. 

The draft guidelines said that the objectives of the norms 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 tracker systems etc. However, the CFA (central financial assistance) calculation shall be based on the CFA structure under the scheme as per capacity of solar modules installed in the system,” it said.

Households with pre-existing solar systems not eligible under RESCO, ULA

It further said that households with pre-existing rooftop solar systems shall not be considered eligible under RESCO and ULA models for the PM Surya Ghar scheme.

Further, under the payment security mechanism, the ministry of new and renewable energy has proposed for a corpus of ₹100 crore to ensure payment security. 

The payment security mechanism that would be managed and administered by national programme implementation agency. The draft guidelines noted that the proposals for utility led aggregation model, the utility can access the payment security mechanism in order to provide payment security for projects in which RESCO partners have been contracted with, through an open transparent bidding process for tariff discovery.

“Under this arrangement, the ULA selected RESCO shall contribute to the PSM Corpus through a one-time PSM fee of ₹2000/installation to be undertaken by it under the ULA.”

The ministry has sought comments and suggestions on the guidelines by 17 September.

The union cabinet approved the ₹75,000 crore rooftop solar scheme to benefit 10 million families in February this year.