Community solar for advancing power sector reforms and the net-zero goals

The study examines the role of the utility-led community solar model in accelerating rooftop solar adoption and in the financial turnaround of distribution companies. Discoms face challenges such as billing and metering inefficiencies, T&D losses, high cross-subsidy burden and under-recovery of costs. Low-paying consumers also contribute to the discoms’ financial and operational challenges. The adoption of distributed renewable energy (DRE) systems can provide an opportunity to address these challenges. Further, the study highlights how a community solar model can aggregate demand and install a larger system on community premises to meet this demand. These systems can be owned by the utility, developer or the community.