IST Magazine Interview with Mr Surya Jeedigunta
Booming Solar Energy Market in INDIA |
IST E-Magazine | December, 2016
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Adviser of IST, Head of Business Development at SNJ SOLAR Energy Solutions LLP
Experience in developing solar market, MegaWatt Project Planning & Project Implementation.
Coordinating with Renewable Energy Departments MNRE , IREDA . SOLAR Energy Centre , State Nodal Agencies, international agencies.
An engineering graduate who is willing to enter into the solar energy field as a startup entrepreneur, what kind of advice you would likely to give him?
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I would start by saying, don’t look at the energy sector limited to power generation. We are entering into age where information is the new currency in Energy.
Smart Grids, Energy storage, EV’s, data analytics are going to change the Power Landscape completely. This is a good time to enter and if you want to make a dent in these areas. To succeed, it is important to study the market thoroughly, build solutions that solve problems. Create your own niche area that you are interested and enjoy building your venture.
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Most of the startup entrepreneurs are the system integrators, What type of business model would be best for them?
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Most of the start-ups in the solar space are in the area of system integrator as it is less capital intensive and easy to start. But gaining traction and scaling up is difficult in this space as initial capital costs are high for solar systems even though operation costs are minimum. This led to some innovative financial models such as RESCO and Lease model where the customer doesn’t pay for the system and only pays for the power that is consumed.
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What is your outlook for the Indian solar market at the central level, state level, RPO and off grid markets till 2017 and beyond?
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While the outlook for solar is positive, given the strong support from the government and robust projects in the pipeline there are also significant bottlenecks such as high interest rates, and debt ridden DISCOMs unable to go for fresh PPA and float new tenders. To address this issue the govt. has come up with UDAY scheme to clean up the balance sheets of these DISCOMs and improve their credit rating.
A RPO target of 10% by 2022 is intune with the Govt. goal but it is the DISCOM’s that needs to honor their commitment.
The Off grid segment started looking attractive as the grid connected MW scale segment beginning to feel the strain of low PPA. Cell towers, Mini grids and Street lights are the segments to watch out for.
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At the end, IST is highly obliged to Mr. Surya who out of his busy schedule managed the time to provide us the valuable insight which actually inspire our newcomers entrepreneurs.
We hope Mr. Surya will keep guiding us in future as well.
Thanking You,
Tanay Sarker,
Dy. Manager, IST