Nagpur: The Nagpur district has topped all other cities in Maharashtra in installing solar panels on rooftops. Under the rooftop solar scheme, over 1.40 lakh houses and buildings have installed solar panels in the State, out of which 24,357 or 17.29% are in Nagpur district.
Under the scheme, customers get subsidies for installing solar panels apart from their electricity bills getting reduced, and if the power generation is more than the usage then it is transferred to the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Ltd (MSEDCL).
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Wed 18 Dec. 2024
According to MSEDCL PRO Yogesh Vitankar, Nagpurians have given good response to the Rooftop Solar Scheme as the city has topped the State for installing solar panels. “Many districts have not even crossed the 10,000 mark while Nagpur has reached over 24,000 installations. We are way ahead of others,” said Vitankar.
In Nagpur Circle of MSEDCL, Nagpur district has installed 24,357 while in Wardha district 2,653 installations were done. MSEDCL officials said there are 1.40 lakh roof top solar projects in the state with installed capacity of about 2,053MW, out of which 251MW electricity generation is in Nagpur district alone. “Nagpur district alone accounts for 17.29% of total solar rooftops in the state while the Nagpur Circle, including Wardha district accounts for 19.18% or 27,010 consumers,” said an official.
Officials also added that seven years ago, only 1,074 consumers in the state were generating 20MW solar power through solar panels, and now this number has increased drastically. In 2022-23, the number stood at around 76,808 in the state and last fiscal year it more than doubled to 1.40 lakh.
Due to the electricity generated from solar energy, consumers use up less electricity than usual, thus reducing the electricity bill as well. In addition, if the customer’s solar panels generate more electricity than the house consumes, the power is sent to the Mahadiscom grid, and the company gives a discount on the electricity bill. This sometimes leads to zero electricity bills for customers.
84,000 new consumers
The State-run Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (MSEDCL) added over 84,000 new consumers during the last financial year within Nagpur Circle. The same was done by processing the applications for new power connections in Nagpur and Wardha districts.
Power officials have been striving to widen the consumer-base and tap in new consumers for which special emphasis is given on fast-tracking the applications seeking new connections. Of these, as many as 65,027 were domestic connections, 10,507 commercial, 1,349 industrial and 5,551 agricultural connections were released.
