New CEB scheme a boost for small power producers

Less than five months after the start of the Small Scale Distributed Generation scheme, the Central Electricity Board has had a very positive response from independent power producers.

A total of 241 projects for the generation of electricity from renewable sources have been submitted whereas the initial estimate was around 200. Of these, 236 propose to produce electricity by tapping solar energy through photovoltaic cells, the other five being hybrid projects, using both wind and solar energy.

“Photovoltaics has been given a good boost with the new scheme of the CEB,” say Didier Philogene, Managing Director of Sotratech ltee.

“This schemeallows small independent power producers (SIPP) to generate electricity and sell up to a maximum of 2MW to the CEB. The tariff proposed is also very interesting. However, these sources of energy can fluctuate, and the CEB says it cannot rely on them for the stability of its network.”

The scheme was launched in December 2010. It enables small producers to generate electricity for their own consumption and sell surplus to the CEB. 

Projects submitted so far account for around 2.9MW. There are 2 categories of small power producers: residential and commercial. Tariff will depend on production capacity.

For producers falling under the micro category (up to 2.5kW) tariff will be Rs25 per kW, for the mini category (2.5 to 10 kW) the tariff will be Rs10 per kW, and for the small category (10 to 50 kW) the tariff will be Rs15 per kW. These rates will apply for the next 15 years.