Paschim Gujarat Vij Company Ltd. is a state owned DISCOM of Western Gujarat that supplies electricity to 66 Lakh Consumers in 12 districts of Saurastra and Kachchh region of Gujarat namely, Rajkot, Jamnagar, Junagadh, Porbandar, Bhuj, Bhavnagar, Surendranagar, Amreli, Botad, Morbi, Devbhumi Dwarka and Gir Somnath. Various Distributed Renewable Energy projects are being implemented by PGVCL as per the State Renewable Energy Policies.
Under the SURYA-Gujarat Scheme, more than 1.50 Lakh Residential consumers have installed Solar Rooftops with the aggregated installed capacity of 605 MW and more are in pipe line. Under this scheme, Solar Projects set up by residential consumers on their rooftop / premises shall be allowed irrespective of consumer sanctioned load. Residential beneficiaries have received a subsidy of 40% for up to 3 kilowatts (kW) system and a subsidy of 20% for a system of above 3 kW and up to 10 kW. The Energy Accounting shall be carried out on Billing Cycle basis.
Surplus Energy generated from the solar project after set off on billing cycle basis is purchased by DISCOM at Rs.2.25 / unit for the first 5 years from commissioning of project and thereafter for the remaining term of the project at 75% of the simple average of tariff discovered and contracted under competitive bidding process conducted by GUVNL as per the policy guideline. The total Rooftop Solar Installed capacity comprising of Residential, C&A and Govt. sector is 820 MW as on Dec-2023.
The success of the large number of Rooftop installations is achieved through various outreach activities carried out by Field Offices, Application process on Unified fully digitized web portal so that consumer gets update on their application stages through e-mail and SMS and large number of the Empaneled Agencies.
Not only that, under the PM-KUSUMComponent C of Feeder Level Solarization, PGVCL has issued LOA for 416 MW to solarized more than 2 lakh Agriculture pump sets. Also, the tender having 300+ MW capacity is under finalization. There are small ground mounted plants having capacity of 145 MW already installed and 62 MW Grid connected Solar Irrigation Pump sets at LT Voltage level. PGVCL has also aimed to solarize more households in Rural area and therefore targeted to make at least 1 village per district to solarize it fully in this year.
Views expressed by: R. J. Vala, Chief Engineer (Project), PGVCL