NEW DELHI - The rooftop terraces in Mr Amit Mehta’s neighbourhood are mostly populated by plastic water tanks, satellite television antennas and a smattering of Hindu religious flags that flutter in the spring breeze. His home in Delhi’s Mayur Vihar locality, however, has a rare additional feature – a rooftop solar unit.

Mr Mehta opted to go solar in 2021, driven by a desire to cut his ecological footprint as well as his monthly electricity bill of around 8,000 rupees (S$130). Since then, his monthly spending on electricity from the grid has shrunk to about 420 rupees, with the bulk of the seven-member household’s energy consumption drawn from his solar unit.

Powered by this windfall, the 46-year-old IT professional has already recouped the 230,000 rupees he shelled out for the 5 kilowatt (kW) unit atop his roof. He now looks forward to making additional savings through its remaining lifespan of around 20 years.

“It gives you a better return than a fixed deposit,” he said, beaming.

Despite the obvious benefits, just around 5,000 residential consumers and cooperative housing societies have installed rooftop solar panels in Delhi, according to a February 2024 report in The Indian Express newspaper. India’s capital has more than 3.34 million households.

Regulatory hurdles, high upfront costs and poor awareness of rooftop solar panels have held back progress, slowing down the roll-out of India’s solar plans.

India missed its target of installing 175 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy capacity by 2022, reaching only 120.9GW. A key reason was the tardy progress of its rooftop solar programme, which saw only 5.87GW installed against a target of 40GW by the end of that year.

But India is now speeding up the roll-out of rooftop solar projects by injecting more money into the sector, giving both reluctant consumers and electricity distribution companies incentives, while also removing procedural bottlenecks.

In February, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that his government would invest around 750 billion rupees to equip 10 million houses with rooftop solar panels. Under this programme, the central government will pay for the entire cost involved in setting up rooftop solar systems for households that consume less than 300 units of electricity per month.

The government has increased its share of subsidy for such consumers from 40 per cent to 60 per cent, with the remaining amount to be financed through a loan to public-sector firms that will set up the rooftop plants. This loan will be repaid through income generated from the sale of excess electricity from a consumer’s rooftop.

Ms Vibhuti Garg, South Asia director at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, told The Straits Times that the government’s enhanced financial support should encourage consumers, especially in smaller cities and towns, to opt for such projects.

“For residential consumers, the high upfront payment has always been a big problem as their consumption is small, and they get electricity at subsidised tariffs, which means the payback period for rooftop solar projects is much longer, and they have less incentive to set them up,” she said.

India aims to install 500GW of renewable energy capacity by 2030, of which around 270GW will come from solar.

However, large-scale solar projects raise concerns of encroachment into scarce agricultural land and natural ecosystems. This makes rooftop projects even more critical in meeting the country’s green energy goals.

An assessment by a New Delhi-based think-tank, the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, last November concluded that 637GW of solar energy capacity could be generated from the rooftops of over 250 million households in the country.

Deploying just one-third of this total solar potential, it added, could support the entire electricity demand of India’s residential sector.

“It is imperative for us to understand that the growth of solar energy (in India) is as important as the spread of solar energy,” said Mr Subrahmanyam Pulipaka, chief executive of the National Solar Energy Federation of India.

“We don’t have the luxury of choosing only one solution, and we have to be agnostic to the entire spectrum of solutions offered by solar.”

Rooftop solar also offers a practical solution to bringing power to remote areas. By generating power where it is consumed, it reduces the cost incurred by distribution companies in transmitting electricity over long distances.

According to government data, as at December 2023, installed capacity for solar power in India had reached around 74.31GW, with grid-connected rooftop solar accounting for 11.08GW.

Amendments to electricity rules were also formally put in place on Feb 22 to facilitate faster installation of rooftop solar systems for households. Units with a capacity of up to 10kW will no longer need a prior technical feasibility study, and the timeline for such studies for those rated higher than 10kW has been reduced from 20 days to 15 days.

These changes, together with a single online portal for applications from consumers across the country, have cut down the “significant variation” that existed in rules governing rooftop solar projects across different states, said Mr Pulipaka.

But hurdles remain, including the right of access to shared rooftop terraces in buildings with several occupants. Mr Mehta said he was able to find a workaround by securing the approval of the two other households in his building, but such an arrangement is not always possible.

“This is a big irritant,” said Mr Atul Goyal, president of United Residents Joint Action of Delhi, a body that represents over 2,500 resident welfare associations in the city.