Proper out of faculty in 2019, Mathew Samuel, an industrial design graduate, joined SELCO Basis — a nonprofit primarily based out of Bengaluru working on the intersection of sustainable vitality options and livelihoods for rural and concrete communities. As somebody enthusiastic about renewable vitality, he wished to achieve a grassroots understanding of this house.
Talking to The Higher India, Mathew remembers, “I used to be working within the design crew to develop merchandise like solar-powered furnaces for blacksmiths, brass polishers, and so forth. Whereas working at SELCO, I met my pal Naseer Sathyala, {an electrical} engineer, who was interning there. Whereas there weren’t any undertaking overlaps, we met regularly. Throughout our discussions, we realised that even essentially the most ardent local weather fanatic we knew hadn’t gone photo voltaic. That was our inflection level.”
“We requested ourselves in the event that they couldn’t do it, what are the percentages for normal individuals, for whom photo voltaic is usually only a peripheral consideration? It turned clear that there wanted to be a a lot better strategy to make photo voltaic vitality straightforward and accessible for everybody,” he provides.
What emerged was an concept for a startup primarily based on the truth that white-collar professionals like them didn’t have entry to a rooftop. Younger professionals like Mathew and Naseer principally lived in rented residences and regularly moved between cities. As people, the financial elements and the challenges related to putting in photo voltaic panels have been important. Nonetheless, they wished to contribute to local weather motion and wished an avenue to do it.
Within the following 12 months, Mathew joined fingers with Naseer and his faculty batchmate Tarun Joseph, a specialist in UX Design, to ascertain ‘SundayGrids’ — a startup steeped within the idea of group photo voltaic.
As Mathew notes, “As an alternative of photo voltaic panels being restricted to our rooftops, individuals can come collectively and take part as a collective in putting in a big plant elsewhere to satisfy their necessities. They usually get the advantages of photo voltaic financial savings on their energy payments.”
It’s an easy concept.
For individuals residing in residences with inadequate house to arrange photo voltaic panels, SundayGrids assists you in buying photo voltaic panels that they arrange in massive areas owned by business and industrial entities. The facility produced by these distant panels is credited towards your electrical energy invoice, thus producing financial savings.
Establishing SundayGrids
“When the three of us got here collectively in 2020, it wasn’t essentially about beginning an organization; it was extra about validating whether or not what we hoped to construct was possible and understanding the necessities to begin constructing,” remembers Mathew.
In late 2020, they have been admitted into the Launchpad programme of the NSRCEL — an incubation centre for startups run by the Indian Institute of Administration, Bangalore (IIM-B). A programme spanning 100 days, it helps startups transfer “from an concept to the implementation stage”.
In addition they received into the incubation programme run by the Basis for Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship (FISE) — “an initiative of Tata Trusts to advertise socially related improvements and entrepreneurship with a mission to create large-scale sustainable social affect.”
“This connection led us to Tata Energy, which helped us develop our mannequin. Whereas we had a reasonably good understanding of photo voltaic from a {hardware} perspective, we weren’t positive of its operational and financial feasibility. They helped us construction our very first PPA (energy buy settlement) in addition to discover a few of our early off-takers (websites to put in panels), apart from suggesting modifications and validating our vitality credit structure,” explains Mathew.
In the meantime, they constructed a 5 kW undertaking on Naseer’s rooftop to function their minimal viable product (MVP) to draw early-adopter prospects. “In 2022, we acquired funding from Rainmatter, an initiative by Zerodha, which helped us to work on compliance and refine the product structure. By 2023, we opened our platform for group participation,” he provides.
Understanding group photo voltaic
Group photo voltaic initiatives throughout the globe are inbuilt a number of methods.
A typical strategy is the digital internet metering mannequin, which permits a unit of energy generated from a photo voltaic plant to be mapped to a shopper’s metre and credited to their account. Which means for every unit of vitality generated on the plant, a corresponding unit is discounted from the buyer’s energy consumption, thereby lowering their electrical energy invoice.
One other mannequin is on-bill crediting, which operates on an ‘vitality credit’ strategy. Right here, a sure low cost charge is assigned for each unit of energy generated. For example, if the speed is Rs 5 per unit, and 100 models of energy are generated in a month, then Rs 500 is discounted from the ability invoice.
“We selected the on-bill crediting mannequin for 2 causes. First, after finding out how group photo voltaic grew initially in locations like america and Europe, we discovered they have been fairly restricted by utility participation. Utilities (entities engaged in electrical energy era and distribution) wanted to actively conform to such fashions, which meant initiatives have been locked into particular utility jurisdictions. For instance, in the event you lived in a state that allowed group photo voltaic, your photo voltaic plant additionally wanted to be inside that very same space. However we wished to construct a mannequin that would scale nationally,” says Mathew.
“The second purpose was that we realised that in India, there was a possibility to leapfrog these limitations. Over the previous few years, the Nationwide Funds Company of India (NPCI) has developed digital public infrastructure like UPI, Quick-tag, and Bharat Billpay (BBPS), which permits nationwide utility aggregation — together with water, broadband, and electrical energy. This turned a one-stop answer for us to combine with a number of utilities throughout the nation,” he provides.
This strategy allowed them to implement on-bill crediting in a approach that would allow anybody throughout India to take part in group photo voltaic and make sure that the initiatives may very well be positioned wherever throughout the nation the place third-party photo voltaic fashions are allowed.
Benefitting individuals who don’t have entry to a rooftop
As Mathew notes, “For individuals dwelling in residence buildings, the challenges of going photo voltaic are multi-faceted. Firstly, they don’t have entry to rooftop areas. Moreover, going photo voltaic requires a long-term view — it usually lasts for a decade or two — and this must be factored into any financial resolution.
The query then arises: will you be staying in the identical place for that lengthy? If you must transfer, what occurs to your photo voltaic?
That is the place digital photo voltaic turns into actually compelling. With the way in which we’ve constructed it, customers can join a number of utility accounts. For instance, in the event you’re dwelling in Mumbai as we speak and want to maneuver to Bengaluru tomorrow, you may simply reassign your photo voltaic credit to your new utility account and proceed saving.”
“One other nice side is that the complete course of is end-to-end managed. As a consumer, you simply must pay a reservation price, which permits us to assign a particular capability for you. For example, if the group photo voltaic plant is 100 kilowatts and your requirement is 2 kilowatts, we make that allocation for you. And in case your vitality consumption modifications — whether or not it will increase or decreases — you may regulate your reservation accordingly,” he provides.
Furthermore, SundayGrids and the photo voltaic builders collaborating within the platform totally handle the complete plant’s lifetime operations — together with cleansing, monitoring, and changing elements. “Photo voltaic modules normally final round 25 years, however different elements like inverters want substitute each 10 years or so, and we maintain all of that. Insurance coverage and different needed protections are additionally dealt with in your behalf. For customers, that is essentially the most handy, hassle-free strategy to get began with photo voltaic,” he claims.
Right here’s a hypothetical breakdown of the way it works:
- Let’s say we set up a 100 kW plant at a business or industrial constructing. As soon as the plant is commissioned, a residential consumer dwelling in an residence reserves 2 kW of the 100 kW capability for Rs 1 lakh.
- Every kilowatt of photo voltaic usually generates round 4 models per day, so the consumer’s reserved capability would generate roughly 2 kW * 4 models/day * 30 days = 240 kWh per thirty days.
- The business entity pays for this energy at Rs 6 per unit, leading to Rs 1440 of vitality credit for the consumer each month (this continues recurrently for the following 15 years).
- If the consumer’s energy invoice for that month was Rs 1,500, they usually pay it by the SundayGrids platform, their vitality credit are utilized, lowering the invoice to only Rs 60.
As Tarun goes on to say, “An superior good thing about the vitality credit mannequin is that for the reason that sale of vitality is tax-free, so is the photo voltaic financial savings in your electrical energy payments. At 11.5% XIRR, the financial savings yield from Digital Photo voltaic is larger than that of conventional rooftop photo voltaic, since as a substitute of bespoke 5-10 kW installations, most of our initiatives are 100-200 kW massive, which supplies us economies of scale and customers don’t have any operational bills.
However why do business entities agree to supply the house to put in these photo voltaic panels?
“Business entities pay a premium tariff for energy in comparison with home charges. Whereas home charges common round Rs 5.5 to Rs 6 per unit, business tariffs can vary from Rs 15 to Rs 20 in some areas. This makes mannequin adoption sooner since we will supply to put in the panels on their rooftop and decrease their energy payments by 30 to 40% at no upfront value,” he notes.
“For them, it’s fast financial savings from day one, they usually obtain end-to-end solar energy administration while not having to fret in regards to the undertaking. One of many incentives for these entities to decide on our mannequin is that we function the plant for the primary 15 years, after which we hand it over to them,” he provides.
“All the ability generated by the plant will get dispatched into the constructing’s metre. This implies the business entity avoids paying the grid’s premium charge and as a substitute pays us a reduced charge, nearer to home tariff ranges,” explains Naseer.
“As soon as the plant is commissioned, we combine it into our platform, making it out there to all our customers. Customers can then reserve capability primarily based on their energy invoice offset objectives. When the capability assigned to a consumer generates energy, the business entity pays us for that energy, and we convert that fee into vitality credit for the consumer. These vitality credit are linked to the consumer’s utility accounts to offset their energy invoice,” he says.
How does SundayGrids generate income?
They make a margin when customers place a reservation. Photo voltaic builders additionally pay a recurring platform cost for itemizing and managing their initiatives.
As a consumer, the benefits of shopping for right into a SundayGrids undertaking are clear. Happening social media and completely different on-line platforms, there are a number of takes on the system they’ve constructed. Whereas some are sceptical of the financial savings/returns generated by shopping for right into a business photo voltaic undertaking, others see it as a method to contribute to the setting whereas additionally saving on their energy payments.
One EV consumer in Mumbai describes buying 0.85 kW of photo voltaic capability in a undertaking commissioned within the metropolis, paying Rs 52,000. He notes, “If you’re an EV (electrical car) proprietor and wouldn’t have entry to a rooftop to put in photo voltaic, then it is smart to purchase some wattage from SundayGrids. If you wish to make investments cash for returns, this isn’t the best avenue.”
In the meantime, Akshat Jain, a monetary marketing consultant on LinkedIn, took a trial of the Cosmos 145 group photo voltaic undertaking close to Bengaluru the place he reserved 3,277W (3.2 kW) at Rs 1.6 lakh. Whereas Akshat elaborates on the electrical energy invoice financial savings, return on funding, and tax financial savings, he additionally elaborates on the potential threat, and that’s necessary to establish earlier than shopping for in.
Rising leaps and bounds
To this point, SundayGrids claims to have over 600 subscribers on their group photo voltaic vegetation and constructed round 800+ kW of capability in Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh.
“To date, we’ve raised round Rs 2.8 crore in funding, with a good portion coming from Rainmatter Capital, the incubator arm of Zerodha. One in every of our primary goals for the approaching years is to onboard extra photo voltaic capability and lift consciousness, serving to extra individuals perceive the mechanisms and inspiring them to take part on our platform. We’re additionally engaged on different necessary features of group photo voltaic, akin to peer-to-peer vitality transaction networks in Bengaluru and digital internet metering in Mumbai. Our plan is to increase our product portfolio, beginning with digital photo voltaic as the muse, after which constructing out from there,” he provides.
(Edited by Pranita Bhat; Pictures courtesy SundayGrids)
