The Kerala State Electricity Board Limited (KSEBL) has started a week-long spot registration campaign for setting up rooftop solar power plants at domestic households with a subsidy of 40% by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy.
Apply Before 10 March
Applications for KSEBL’s Soura Subsidy Scheme using the Ministry’s subsidy will be accepted only till 10 March 2022. However, applications for plants without subsidy will continue to be accepted. As the subsidy was introduced in the year 2020, Ernakulam district alone accounted for 225 installations while the number was 1,200 for the entire Kerala.
Arun T.A, KSEBL assistant engineer as well as officer in charge of the scheme for Ernakulam circle said, “Under the spot registration campaign, applicant will be provided assistance for online registration at our offices whereas previously they had to do it on their own on our website ekiran.kseb.in. The scheme is for setting up solar plants of up to 10 KW of which subsidy of 40 percent will be available for the first 3 KW and it will be 20% for the remaining 7 KW. Therefore the subsidy component will be Rs. 1.06 lakh for setting up a 10 KW solar plant with a total cost of Rs. 5.40 lakh”.
It must be noted that solar plants with the capacity to generate 4 KW were the most popular & helped reduce the electricity bills of households that consumed between 2 KW & 3 KW per month. The excess power generated can be given to the grid for which the costumers will be paid at the end of the year as per the rate fixed by the Electricity Regulatory Commission. Hence on an average, it will come to around Rs. 3 / unit.
Arun said, “Solar power plants were already popular with establishments & companies considering that they were charged at commercial rates. The project turned great for the households with the introduction of the subsidy component”.
Price of intallation of solar power plants
The price of installation of solar power plants of up to 2 KW is around Rs. 67,000 / KW and is inversely related to the capacity. This means - the greater the generation capacity the lower will be the price. Consumers can select any of the 37 companies empanelled by KSEBL for installation & the maintenance will also be done free of cost by them for 5 years. In addition, the solar panels are guaranteed for 25 years.
