Waaree Energies Ltd, one of India’s largest manufacturers of Solar PV Modules with manufacturing capacity of 1.5 GW, is seeing its revenue from solar rooftop segment growing to reach Rs 400 crore in the next fiscal.
“We have been doing rooftop installations since 2010 and this year we are likely to cross 25MW spread across the country. Next year we target another 100 MW in the rooftop segment,” Sunil Rathi, Director, Waaree Energies said in the interview with BusinnessLine.
He added that company is targeting mainly commercial and industrial segments where the return on investments is assured and project funding is available followed by small and medium enterprises. In the residential segment (from 1kV to 10 kV), Waaree relies on its Franchise partners across the country as customers are always more comfortable with local dealers, Rathi said. According to him, next year is looking “more promising” for the solar industry than the current fiscal which has seen many uncertainties over GST rate and safeguard duty, rupee depreciating against the dollar and tariffs being capped.
In FY20, Rathi projects, Waaree would reach Rs 400 crore revenue from the rooftop solar vertical from the domestic market, “We also intend to do rooftop solar in the international market, we are already opening our offices across the world,” he added. Waaree Energies has been building its capabilities around providing third party EPC services and project development. The company sees opportunities in the EPC space in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and South America markets.
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) has earlier this week approved two schemes, the KUSUM (Kisan Urja Suraksha evam Utthaan Mahabhiyan) scheme promoting the use of solar powered agriculture pumps by farmers and phase-II of rooftop solar programme with a funding outlay of Rs. 11,814 crore for achieving the 40 GW rooftop solar capacity target by FY22.
“The approval for the phase-II of the roof-top solar programme with focus on enhancing the adoption by the residential sector is a positive for the sector, given the slow growth in solar rooftop capacity witnessed so far,” Sabyasachi Majumdar, Group Head - Corporate ratings, ICRA Ltd, said. ICRA estimates the installed roof top solar capacity in the country at 1.4 GW as on December 31, 2019 against the target of 40 GW by FY2022.
According to Sabyasachi, even though distribution companies (Discoms) remain the nodal agencies for this scheme with assured performance linked incentives, they rather resist the adoption of rooftop as more and more industrial and residential electricity consumers opt for solar power the cost of which has dropped significantly over the last two years.