Small rooftop solar plants to create 3.25 lakh jobs in 10 yrs

Small rooftop solar power plants alone are likely to create 3.25 lakh jobs cumulatively in the next ten years in India, says a report.
"The small rooftop scenario (sector) would contribute the most to job creation, with around 3,25,000 cumulative new jobs in next ten years," a report by Bridge to India, a company engaged in businesses like Strategic Consulting, Market Intelligence and Project Development, said.
The supply chain for small rooftop systems would include many intermediaries, spreading margins across more layers, it said.
The report divided the solar power sector into four segments -- small rooftops, large rooftops, utility scale projects and ultra mega projects.

The average size of a small rooftop solar is 3 KWp (kilowatt peak), the power achieved by a solar module under full solar radiation. The average size of a large scale rooftop is 250 KWp, utility scale project 20 MW and that of ultra mega solar scheme is 1,000 MWp or 1 GWp.
In large rooftop systems, around 2.20 lakh cumulative jobs and in the utility scale scenario around 71,000 cumulative jobs will be created in the next 10 years.

The report added that the least number of jobs will be created in the ultra mega scale category. The total number of jobs in this scenario comes to only around 63,000 in ten years.

The general policy recommendations to enable the sector to grow under any of the four scenarios is creating transparent and dependable solar policies to encourage Indian and international investment.
They also include making available better financing instruments whether related to the end-consumer or infrastructure finance, making the electricity market more competitive and transparent with respect to power tariffs and grid usage and rules.
At present, the country's installed solar power capacity stands at about 2,600 MW. The government has plans to scale this capacity up to 20,000 MW by 2022.