While Modhera is home to an 11th-century Sun temple, not many knew about the village until the much publicised visit by the UN secretary-general. Days before Guterre’s trip to Modhera, the government declared it as the first round-the-clock solar village in the country.

Around 1,300 families in the village have installed solar panels on their rooftops to power their homes. Guterres interacted with some of them and the villagers told him harnessing solar energy has allowed them to save on their energy bills.

The village has solar-powered street lights, bus stops, schools, anganwadis etc. The ground-mounted solar plant in Modhera powers the famous Sun temple.

With this primary idea, the government launched the schemes to install rooftop solar panels in Modhera. It was more of a pilot to see how solar energy can be harnessed at scale and whether it can be replicated in other areas.

It seems there have been some hits and misses with the project.

Installing solar panels can help reduce the use of fossil fuels to generate power, it can also help residents save 60-100 per cent of their electricity bills. At times, they can also earn by supplying the surplus power to the electric grid.

The ground-mounted solar power plant in Modhera is integrated with a battery energy storage system (BESS) for use at night. The rooftop system contributes to the grid and derives power also from the grid in the night.

The government has installed solar panels on all houses free of cost and it bears the maintenance cost too. It has reportedly spent Rs 80 crore on building the rooftop (7.5 MW) and ground-based (1 MW) solar capacity.

The state government allotted a 12-acre plot for installing the ground-based solar power project.

While the initial cost of installing solar power plants is typically high, it is offset in the longer term as there is no input cost (of coal), and low maintenance and environmental costs. Thus, any cost-benefit analysis usually tilts in favour of solar power projects, making the investment worthy of the initial investment.

As beneficial as it seems it is to harness solar energy, it is equally difficult to maintain the technology. Intelligent implementation of solar projects is key to being able to make the most of them.

The Challenges

There are several challenges in installing rooftop solar panels, including in Modhera. For example, pucca houses with sharply slanting roofs cannot be fitted with solar panels. It’s not structurally feasible.

Similarly, the kutcha houses in rural areas are too fragile to bear the burden of the panels. Almost 30 per cent of houses in Modhera do not draw power from solar plants. This puts in doubt the claim the village is fully solar-powered.

There are other challenges as well.

– Solar parks require large fields. The government has largely focussed on making use of the wasteland around the Modhera village. However, the cattle herders of the Sujjanpura village, which houses the 12-acre solar park for the Sun Temple, complain about the loss of the grazing land. There could be incidents of stray animals and animals suffering fatal injuries by colliding with these panels.

– Technological inefficiency: Several Modhera residents also said they get electricity bills, albeit of lesser amounts. This means their power consumption from the grid is more than their solar energy production. There could be valid reasons for these – such as the inverter inefficiency and the use of poor grid control system.

-- The villagers also complain about frequent tripping of the solar inverter, likely due to a sudden power surge. A villager said electrical equipment like air-conditioners and washing machines malfunction due to the frequent tripping of the line. They said their frequent complaints to the Gujarat Electricity Board and solar power agencies have not been properly addressed.The technical faults at the dedicated solar park for the Sun Temple are addressed promptly since the solar park is run by the electricity board. Maintenance, like cleaning the panels, also will be well taken care of.

– Burden of maintenance: Solar panels are delicate, bulky pieces of equipment. They demand regular cleaning and maintenance. Those who install these panels usually don’t clean them at regular intervals.A Modhera resident said jokingly that the rains have been helping them. “It is difficult to reach these panels to clean them,” said another. The power generation capacity of these panels deteriorates drastically if they are covered by dust.

– Electrical waste: Discarded solar panels can be difficult to manage. They are too large to be transported and their debris can create problems if left abandoned at the site. Also, there is the issue of the long-term impact of the heat generated by hundreds of solar panels.

India has set an aim of meeting 50 per cent of its power needs from renewable energy sources by 2030. The recent budget talks about lighting up 1 crore homes with rooftop solar energy this year. With around 300 sunny days a year, solar power is set to be the main driver for this. Currently, India generates 70 GW of solar power. The aim is to create a solar power capacity of 280 GW by the end of this decade, nearly half of the 500 GW of renewable energy capacity targeted by that time.

To achieve this, solar power capacity needs to be ramped up significantly – nearly four times the current capacity. Thus, it would be wiser to keep these challenges in mind while championing the cause of solar energy to power our homes.

(The author is a research scholar and is the director of Centre for Field Learning, Ahmedabad. Researchers Ketav Patel and Aaisha Nazrana also contributed to this article. Views expressed are personal)