Going solar in India fares much better than most other places. Geographically, being closer to the equator means sunnier climates and shorter shadows. Also with generally progressive policies around renewables and solar in particular, if residents have the space and the wherewithal to install solar, it is absolutely great investment to hedge against rising power bills.
Regarding investing in a solar system for home use; the incurred cost varies based upon a multitude of factors;
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<img src=”/icons/playback-fast-forward_gray.svg” alt=”/icons/playback-fast-forward_gray.svg” width=”40px” /> TL;DR
Main cost factors are;
- Capacity required for the household’s needs
- Type of panels and inverters used in the solar system
- The cost of workforce for engineering and installation of the panels
- Subsides and grants available to reduce the costs
Going Digital Solar
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Capacity
An average medium household requires around 2 kW to 4 kW depending on the family size. Off-grid based systems (meaning those with batteries integrated) costs around 1.25 lakhs/kw, which accounts 40% higher cost due to storage system which needs to be replaced every 5 years, than net metering systems (directly connected to the grid without batteries).
On-grid systems are the best suit as it alleviates the need of storage system and the excess energy generated can be exported to grid, which can generate additional revenue for surplus power. They on the other hand costs around Rs. 65000 to Rs. 70000/ kW.
Panels need to have frequent cleaning and maintenance done to keep the performance up. A good rule of thumb is to consider operations and maintenance costs to annually be around 2% of the overall cost of the system.
Auxiliary supports such as insurance, monitoring comes at an additional cost.
Type of Hardware
The above cost has been considered for monocrystalline PERC solar panels. Other types include polycrystalline and thin-film panels which is explored in detail here. Even among inverters, there are configurations available such as string inverters which connects all the panels and converts their output together, or micro-inverters which converts output of a smaller subset of panels (better for performance). But as one can guess, that means the cost of micro-inverters are on the higher end.
Others
Labor costs are relatively higher in metropolitan cities than the tier II and tier III cities/towns. Labor costs accounts to around 5-7% of the overall system costs during installation of the system, whereas it would be lower when the projects are located in tier II and tier II cities.
Additionally, the subsides and grants available to the customer at a state level as well as need level (for agriculture, residential or industrial) could drastically impact wha the landed cost of the system could be.
