Govt’s new RPO trajectory gives big boost to small RE projects of less than 10 GW

New Delhi: Renewable Energy (RE) projects of less than 10 GW will get a major boost from the changes made by the government to the growth trajectory for Renewable Purchase Obligation (RPO) from FY25 to FY30. The government has introduced a new segment in the mix titled ‘distributed renewable energy’ under which RE projects of capacity less than 10 MW are covered. “The distributed renewable energy component shall be met only from the energy generated from renewable energy projects that are less than 10 MW in size and shall include solar installations under all configurations (net metering, gross metering, virtual net metering, group net metering, behind the meter installations and any other configuration) notified by the Central Government,” said a notification published by the Ministry of Power in the Gazette of India.

RPO for Distributed Renewable Energy to increase from 1.50% to 4.50%

The renewable purchase obligation for Distributed Renewable Energy will increase progressively from 1.50 percent in FY25 to 4.50 percent in FY30. The purchase obligations for wind will increase from 0.67 percent in FY25 to 3.48 percent in FY30, hydro power will increase from 0.38 percent in FY25 to 1.33 percent in FY30, while other renewable energy will increase from 27.35 percent to 34.02 percent. The total RPO will increase from 29.91 percent in FY25 to 43.33 percent in FY30.

The changes made to the RPO trajectory is significant because the obligations have been issued under the Energy Conservation Act and will, therefore, attract hefty penalties for non-compliance.

BEE to maintain RPO compliance data

The government has also entrusted the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE), under the Power Ministry, with the task of maintaining data related to the compliance of renewable energy utilisation by the designated consumers and submitting reports to the Centre.