First Solar

It stood as an imperative for the industry to develop a wholistic understanding of the solar rooftop clusters in order to understand the envelope opportunity under short, medium and long term and covering MSMEs, Commercial Consumers, Large Industries, Education Sector, System Integrators & EPC Players across the country.

What was the study about?

Identification of exploitable solar rooftop potential amidst competition from OA market through GOAR

The client wished to understand the exploitable solar rooftop potential and its outlook on a state wise basis along with the quantum of the volume which shall face competition from open access market transactions given the implementation of GOAR.

Focus areas of the study

The objective of the study was to identify state wise solar rooftop potential with an split of C&I volume

The client wished to identify the exploitable solar rooftop capacities to be upcoming with an outlook for C&I consumers across 15 Indian states – Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan , Odisha & West Bengal. The targeted C&I categories that client was interested in were – Chemical, foundry, rice mills, pharma units, cement units, warehouses, leather producing units, plastic producing units, machine tools, wooden products, coir, mixed minerals, brick industry, hand tools, oil mills, textiles, glass & ceramics etc. with respect to their electricity usage pattern and connected load.

Eninrac’s approach for the study

To cater to the client’s requirements, the study was broadly classified into different phases

The realization of the potential of RTS will take some on ground factual understanding for the developers to bridge the gap of capacity additions pace in the country. To RTS market in a regional dynamism exists wherein the market is flooded with small unorganized players who pose significant competition in certain end use category with repeat orders. Moreover, the regulatory & policy environment across the state’s (due to concurrent structure) does not hold similarity and has specifics to it w.r.t to development models of RTS whether on RESCO or CAPEX. Therefore, factoring this a holistic potential assessment of RTS potential was required with a split across the key industries and on a state-wide basis which shall make the approach to go-to-market (GTM) strategies for the market players an easy job. Keeping this in mind the domain specialists and market research experts at eninrac consulting thought to conduct a detailed “Voice of Consumer (VoC)” survey on pan India basis adapting a cluster-based approach for RTS uptake at an augmented pace in the country.

Player wise market share and the categories of industry which adapted to RTS by capacity in FY 2023

Post the VoC inputs our domain specialists and eninrac Knowledge Grid (KG) experts will involve in a detailed D2I (data to information) model to separately assess the market potential on state wise basis. This shall be followed by cluster & solar rooftop potential (MW) identification for regional basis for:

1. SME’s & Industrial Consumers Covering
   • Automotive & engineering products, cold chain/warehousing, leather, plastic, foundry, paper, textiles, pharma, chemicals and food & beverages etc.
2. Large Commercial Retail Consumers Covering
   • Shopping malls, banks in rural & urban areas and cineplexes etc.
3. Education Consumers Covering
   • Universities & colleges, private schools & government schools etc.
4. PSU Sector Consumers Covering
   • CPSUs and State PSUs

Apart from the above objective the key findings of the market research upon RTS shall be oriented to unearth the key barriers impacting the business growth coupled with lending scenario through a detailed consumer-based experience track.

Eninrac’s recommendations

Key prepositions & recommendations suggested by Eninrac to the client

1. C&I Segment was slower and is showing signs of improvements consistently with residential segment adapting RTS consistently well
2. Potential for RTS adaptation could see a 5X growth in market volume in another 5 years if the consumer awareness and cost reduction trajectory is maintained.
3. To function as a successful RTS players in India it would be ideal to work extensively towards invoking consumer awareness towards.
4. Associating with channel partners in both established and upcoming RTS market is crucial to tap in the potential and not loose out market to competition.
5. Different margins for different state’s shall be the way forward to deal with competition in the clusters especially for larger customers case to case basis approach shall be ideal.
6. Having consistent track of approvals, regulations and policy on each state to stay ahead of the competition and generate consumer awareness shall be the key for greater RTS.
7. To establish consumer help centers to quickly resolve queries and maintain best in class service would be another factor for RTS market penetration for the market players will be an imperative, especially for the bigger one’s having presence on pan India basis.