NEW DELHI: Chandigarh may soon make solar rooftop plants mandatory for all houses and buildings occupying plots larger than 100 square yards in a first of its kind clean energy drive in the country.A notification to this effect is expected shortly, said Santosh Kumar, director of Chandigarh Renewable Energy Science and Technology Promotion Society ( CREST ), an arm of the union territory’s department of science and technology.CREST is in talks with Chandigarh administrator Kaptan Singh Solanki to get the urban planning department to issue a notification to this effect. “They are likely to issue it within this month,” said Kumar.According to the proposal, houses on plots of 100-500 square yards will have the option to install either a 1 kW solar plant or a 100-litre solar heating system. Larger houses will have no such choice. Those on plots of 500-1,000 square yards must set up solar rooftops of 1 kW, while those on 1,000-3,000 square yards will need 2 kW solar plant and those above 3,000 square yards must set up 3 kW solar plant.A 1 kW solar plant would generate 4-4.5 units of power a day. Haryana had passed a similar order in early 2015, but only for new buildings occupying more than 500 square yards.Chandigarh has gone a step further by making it applicable to all buildings, old and new.While no new house or building will be given a completion certificate unless it has a rooftop solar plant installed, existing buildings will need to comply with the new requirement within two years.“The idea is that everyone should do it. The focus will be on residential buildings,” said Kumar. “Houses on plots of the size of 500 square yards, say, are worth Rs 2-3 crore. People owning such houses can surely afford to put up a solar rooftop plant,” he said.A 1 kW solar plant costs around Rs 85,000. The Union ministry of new and renewable energy provides a 30% subsidy for rooftop solar panels, which would bring the price down to around Rs 60,000. This subsidy, however, does not extend to industrial and commercial establishments.The Chandigarh administration is not providing any additional incentive. However, the subsequent reduction in the building owner’s power bills will cover the entire capital cost within a few years, Kumar said.If the rooftop plant of any building produces surplus power it can be sold to the grid at Rs 8.51 per unit. “That is the tariff till the end of the current financial year,” said Kumar. “After March this could be revised by the Joint Electricity Regulatory Commission.”Currently, Chandigarh has an installed capacity of 6.5 MW of rooftop solar. Another 3 MW is expected to be installed in the next three months. However, these plants are almost exclusively on government buildings, including 58 schools and 10 colleges. Very few private homes and commercial buildings have installed such plants.Kumar wants it changed. “If solar targets are to be achieved, there must be active participation by the states,” he said. “We want Chandigarh to have around 100 MW of rooftop solar capacity by 2022,” he said.India has set itself a target of 100,000 MW of solar power by 2022, including 40,000 MW of rooftop solar. Its success will depend on government policies and how strictly they are implemented.The experience in Haryana so far does not inspire confidence.Shaurya Bajaj, analyst at solar energy consultancy Bridge to India, recently noted in a blog post that despite the government order Haryana’s current solar rooftop capacity is just 17 MW. “This is nowhere close to the target the policy had initially envisaged,” he said. “The reasons for this could be unavailability of net metering connections and/or lack of information available to consumers about how to comply with the regulation,” Bajaj said.