Hidco, Canada firm to cut New Towns’ solar power bill

Kolkata: The West Bengal Housing & Infrastructure Development Corporation (Hidco)  will seek Canadian assistance for boosting renewable energy as part of its efforts to develop New Town as an Intelligent City.

A delegation from Canada, which had attended the two-day Bengal Global Business Summit (BGBS), has suggested a new financial model of solar power for the households in New Town where all financial, technical and operational requirements for the rooftop solar system are fulfilled by specialist companies.

However, the consumers get a substantial discount, typically between 20 per cent and 30 per cent on their grid power cost.

“We had a detailed discussion with a delegation from Canada about  their new financial model titled Opex where a third party photo voltaic (PV) project developer finances and installs the system on rooftop of owner/consumer’s premises and sells all solar power output under a long-term agreement. This model is extremely popular in the US where almost half of the rooftop solar PV installations are owned by specialist Opex developers such as SolarCity, Vivint, Sunrun etc,” a top Hidco official said.

According to India Solar Rooftop Map released by Bridge to India consulting firm a few months ago, India has added 513 MW of rooftop solar capacity over the past 12 months reaching total installed capacity of 1,020 MW, 22 per cent of which has been built under Opex model.

“Consumers do not want to incur up front capital costs but still want to benefit from falling costs of solar power. We are hopeful the model will work for New Town,” Hidco chairman Debashis Sen said.

Hidco had signed an MoU with Indo Canadian Chamber of Commerce for Intelligent cities at BGBS.