Gandhinagar: Gujarat government today announced the Gujarat Renewable Energy Policy – 2023 in presence of Energy minister Kanubhai Desai to boost the projects of wind, solar and hybrid technology based renewable power generation. The new policy covers ground mounted solar, rooftop solar, floating solar, canal top solar and wind, rooftop wind and wind-solar hybrid projects. The new policy will be effective till 2028 or till introduction of another new policy.

By the year 2030, India has set a target of increasing the renewable energy capacity to 500 GW and achieving 50 percent of the country’s total energy requirement from renewable energy.

Gujarat has made provisions to provide various facilities in this policy with the aim of achieving 50 percent of the entire electricity production through renewable energy by 2030 under this new renewable energy policy to fulfill this name of the Prime Minister.

The potential renewable capacity of the state will be utilized to the maximum and approximately 4 lakh acres of land is expected to be utilized in the upcoming projects under this policy.

As a result of Gujarat’s Renewable Energy Policy – 2023, there are also possibilities of investment of five lakh crores.

The benefits under the new policy will be applicable for a period of 25 years from the date of project commissioning or the life time period of the renewable projects whichever is earlier.

Gujarat Energy Development Agency – GEDA will act as the nodal agency to issue project registration, validation, commissioning certificate and monthly progress report under this policy.

Gujarat Energy Vikas Nigam Limited-GUVNL will as an agency do the policy implementation, coordination and monitoring.

Key highlights and provisions of the Gujarat Renewable Energy Policy – 2023 are as follows –

– There are no restrictions on the capacity to set up RE projects in terms of consumer contract demand.

– RE power settlement against consumer consumption will be carried out based on billing cycle.

– Green Power Supply – 100% RE energy supply on customer request at green power supply tariff fixed by Gujarat Electricity Regulatory Commission-GERC from time to time.

– Option of net metering or gross metering is available for rooftop projects.

– Small scale rooftop wind projects can be installed by consumers.

– Offshore wind projects will be encouraged.

– The policy will facilitate wind turbine generator-WTG manufacturers and RE developers to install prototype WTGs.

– Promoting repowering of wind turbine generators i.e. old, undersized and inefficient wind turbines will be allowed to be re-energized and replaced with larger and more efficient turbines. There is no limit on capacity addition for repowering.

– Conversion of existing installed wind power plants or standalone wind or solar power plants under construction into hybrid projects will be facilitated under this policy.

– No banking charges will be applicable on solar power consumed by residential customers, while banking charges as determined by GERC from time to time will be applicable for other customers.

– RE parks that this policy promotes include solar parks, wind parks and hybrid parks.

– Floating solar projects can be developed on canals, rivers.

– Cross-subsidy surcharge and additional surcharge will not be applicable on captive power projects.

– Discoms will contract to procure power from RE projects selected through a competitive bidding process.

– Discoms can procure electricity from solar projects up to 4 MW at simple average tariff + Rs.0.20 per kWh tariff of the tariff contracted under competitive bidding in previous 6 months and wind projects up to 10 MW at simple average tariff.

– Power can be exported outside Gujarat through ISTS connected project.

– There will be a single web portal under Ease of Doing Business. DeshGujarat