Solar City Varanasi: Why is PM Modi’s constituency failing to achieve its targets? Think ‘conceptual flaws’

Mahendra Kumar Singh, a solar vendor in Varanasi — the parliamentary constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi — is having a long conversation on the possibilities related to rooftop solar in the district, complaints of irregularities in electricity billing and poor working style of the state electricity department.

As Singh talks, 50-year-old Dheeraj Pandey eagerly waits to have a word with him. The harshness of the April sun can be felt on his sweaty face and breathless voice. Pandey, a resident of Chitaipur village, wants to install a solar plant with battery backup.

When asked why he does not want to install an on-grid solar plant, Pandey says in an irritated voice: “Villages suffer six-hour power cuts daily. On-grid is of no benefit to us.”

An on-grid solar plant works only when there is electricity. Off-grid or hybrid solar plants are connected to a battery. In case of power cuts, such plants can provide electricity according to the capacity of the battery.

Troubled by heat and power cuts, Dheeraj Pandey and others talk to solar vendor Mahendra Kumar Singh for advice on solar

A balancing act

The residents of PM Modi’s parliamentary constituency proudly claim that there is no problem of electricity here.

After a pause, they also add that when a fault, overloading or tripping occurs in summer, the power is cut for barely half an hour.

However, the reality is that with the onset of summer and increase in demand for electricity, power cuts occur several times a day. In rural areas, these cuts last for several hours. This is happening this year too.

The maximum temperature in Varanasi reached 43.6 degrees Celsius (°C) in 2021, 45.2°C in 2022 and 44.5°C in 2023. In 2021 and 2022, 20 to 25 heatwave days were recorded. For the last more than five years, the district has been facing temperatures 4 to 6 degrees above normal. This year too, the temperature crossed 40 degrees in the month of April.

In 2023, there were 54 deaths due to severe heatwaves in Ballia district adjoining Varanasi and about 300 people were hospitalised. The entire region of Purvanchal (of which Varanasi is a part) was in the grip of heat wave. In such a situation, a power cut makes the situation unbearable.

In the last three financial years, a difference of 4 to 8 per cent has been recorded between the demand and supply of electricity in India. There was a difference of 4 billion units between demand and supply of electricity in the year 2023-24. In 2022-23, this figure was 8 billion units. Which means the demand for electricity is much more than what we are generating.

The aim of the roof top solar plant under PM Suryaghar Yojana is to contribute towards filling this gap. Plants with a production capacity of 1,000 billion units are to be set up under this scheme. For achieving this target, a 30 gigawatt (GW) solar capacity has to be achieved through rooftop solar energy by the year 2026-27. This will reduce 720 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2eq) emissions over the next 25 years.

Under PM Suryaghar Yojana, the focus is on big cities with 24-hour electricity availability. In Uttar Pradesh, there is a provision of 24-hour power supply in urban areas, 20 hours in tehsil (sub-district) headquarters and 18 hours in rural feeders.

How it started

On January 8, 2024, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had expressed a desire to achieve an ambitious target of installing rooftop solar in 25,000 homes in Varanasi by March 31, 2024.

A few days later, on January 22, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the PM Suryaghar Yojana to install solar plants in 10 million Indian homes. Under this, a target was set to illuminate 75,000 homes in Varanasi with rooftop solar within three years.

Solar plants had not been installed even in 500 homes of the district by 2023-end. With the PM’s announcement, Uttar Pradesh Renewable Energy Authority (UPNEDA) started pulling all stops to achieve the target set for Varanasi.

For this, 10 officials from other departments were given the responsibility of project in-charge in Varanasi. These include chief medical officer, municipal corporation officials, senior officials of departments like agriculture, horticulture, excise, public works department, forest department, tourism, handloom and food safety.

Targets for rooftop solar were set for all departments after the launch of the PM Suryaghar Yojana. The PM’s announcement meant that personnel from 34 departments including agriculture, horticulture, excise, teachers, doctors, drug inspectors, etc. were engaged in solar registration for 32 days (before the implementation of the model code of conduct).

For instance, the district school inspector was given a target of 1,000 homes. To achieve this goal, he also exhorted all principals, teachers and employees to install plants at their homes.

Whatever impact this solar campaign run on a war footing may have had on the functioning of other departments, by March the number of registrations in the Prime Minister’s parliamentary constituency reached 28,000. But this was just the registration figure. The number of plants being set up was not even 10 per cent.

According to data received by Down to Earth (DTE) from the Uttar Pradesh New and Renewable Energy Development Agency (UPNEDA) Lucknow office, 859 rooftop solar plants with a capacity of 4,187 kilowatts had been installed in the district till April 4.

On the other hand, according to UPNEDA’s Varanasi office, solar plants of 10 MW were installed on 2,000 houses in the district at an average of 5 kW per house by the second week of April.

Apart from this, 46 plants of 7848 kW were installed on government buildings in Varanasi, and 36 plants of 14,395 kW were installed on commercial buildings. Also, 174 kW solar street lights have been installed in the city.

Ravindra Prajapati and Shambhunath Tiwari, who registered under PM Suryaghar Yojana

Where is the money?

The provision of lump sum money for setting up solar plants is emerging as the biggest hurdle, even as PM Modi has been promoting the PM Suryaghar Yojana as a free electricity scheme.

The estimated cost of a 1 kW solar plant is Rs 65,000 on which a subsidy of Rs 45,000 is available from the Centre and the state. A 2 kW plant costs Rs 1.3 lakh and subsidy on it is Rs 90,000. The cost of a 3 kW plant is Rs 1.8 lakh and subsidy is Rs 1.08 lakh.

Ravindra Kumar Prajapati, a resident of Sagahat village in the Rohania area of ​​Varanasi and an electrician by profession, has registered for setting up a 2 kW plant under the PM Suryaghar Yojana.

He is busy arranging money for this. “We are a family of five. It is very hot. We just have fans and bulbs. If our solar plant is installed, we will also install a cooler,” says Prajapati. He adds that there is a power cut of 6-8 hours every day in his area.

Besides Prajapati, DTE met several others in Varanasi who have registered under the PM Suryaghar Yojana but are finding it difficult to arrange money. These people expect the vendors installing the solar plants to deduct the subsidy and carry out the installation.

Singh, whom Dheeraj Pandey has come to for advice, says, “Does the section of society targeted by the scheme have enough money? In March, we cut off the subsidy and installed plants at the homes of about 10 people. Their subsidy has not yet arrived. Our money is stuck. If you want to do business, you have to do all this.”

Solar vendor Prince Pandey says, “There was tremendous excitement regarding rooftop solar in the wake of the PM’s announcement. But people are not in a position to pay so much money in one go”.

Anupam Shukla, UPNEDA director, says, “We have taken measures so that banks and non-banking financial institutions can provide loans. Also, a corpus of about Rs 100 crore has been set aside in the current financial year as subsidy for installing solar plants.”

Electricity consumers and solar vendors in Varanasi told DTE that people are not showing interest in taking loans from banks for setting up solar plants. They consider paying the monthly electricity bill to be a cheaper option than an installment to repay the loan.

Irregularities in net metering and electricity bills are a big problem in Varanasi

Administrative & technical hiccups

Another major problem facing the campaign to popularise rooftop solar in Uttar Pradesh is the responsibility of individual departments.

UPNEDA has been tasked with solar. The electricity department is in charge of setting up smart meters or installing net meters. Once the solar plant is operational, the power distribution company links it to the software.

Reading the meter lets one know how many units of electricity the plant has generated every day, how many have been used, the surplus as well as imported units.

Shashi Kumar Gupta, project officer of UPNEDA in Varanasi, says, “Meters and their software are the biggest challenge. That is why some people are not getting proper billing. They consequently complain that they are facing problems due to solar.”

Gupta adds, “Instead of dividing the work among different departments, a single department should take over the entire responsibility of the solar campaign. This will reduce technical bottlenecks.”

The energy transition must ensure access to clean energy for all people

Equitable & accessible

The Prime Minister’s Office, Uttar Pradesh government and all the senior officials at the district level made all-out efforts to install 25,000 rooftop solar plants in Varanasi by March 31. But they failed. Why did this happen?

Kunal Sharma, Global Head of Energy System Transition at the Forum for the Future, who works on energy and climate issues, noted in an article that the transformation of the energy system is just about delivery in gigawatts. “As we reimagine our energy landscape, it is important that it is equitable and accessible to all.”

“We also seek to repattern power dynamics, by working on governance structures, participatory approaches and business models, to enable citizens and communities to have a greater say in decision-making and deliver a more equitable distribution of the costs and benefits of the energy transition. These are essential building blocks for fostering public support, political will, and business sentiment in favour of the energy transition,” he wrote further.

The article emphasised that energy is not just for boosting the economy but for the betterment of society and environment for all.

Pandey and Prajapati, residents of PM Modi’s Lok Sabha constituency, want to achieve energy security for their family through solar.

At the same time, Ravish Kumar Chaudhary, who runs a shop in Aloknagar Colony, Varanasi, shows the 3 kW solar plant installed on the roof of his house in the searing heat.

“If our electricity bill is reduced even a little, it is beneficial for me. Other people around me are also taking interest in it,” he says.

The Government of India has set a target of achieving 50 per cent of its total energy capacity from renewable energy sources by 2030. The tenure of the next government will be very important to achieve this goal.

(This story was produced with support from Internews’s Earth Journalism Network.)

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