INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW WITH ANDREW HINES
HEAD OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT SOUTH INDIA, CLEANMAX SOLAR
EQ: Government of India target of 40GW Rooftop Solar by 2022. Can the industry achieve this target?
AH: This target is very ambitious, but not unachievable. Rooftop solar has seen tremendous growth in the past few years, and that will continue. Achieving 40 GW will require strong policy and regulatory support, including:
• Enabling financing structures. Accelerated depreciation has been an important driver of rooftop solar in particular, and it’ s hard to see India reaching the 40 GW target if AD is removed.
• Sensible net metering rules. It’ s been fantastic to see net metering introduced across the country recently. However, there are a lot of arbitrary restrictions such as caps on capacity. Telengana recently revised its policy in a way that will directly boost rooftop solar in the state. It would be great to see other states follow suit.
EQ: Please present case study of few noteworthy projects executed by your company in the distributed solar space
AH: As the oldest and largest rooftop solar developer in India, we have installed the largest onsite / rooftop solar plants in Maharashtra( 3.9 MWp, telecommunications company), Karnataka( 2 MWp, automotive manufacturer), Gujarat( 2 MWp, automotive manufacturer), and Tamil Nadu( 2.6 MWp, automotive components manufacturer), to name a few. However, confidentiality requirements of our corporate clients prevent us from identifying many of these clients by name.
• Manipal University( Karnataka) and Manipal University Jaipur, 900 kWp each. These are the two largest private university solar installations in India.
• Bangalore International Airport, 500 kWp, rooftop, including on airside buildings
EQ: Please describe in detail about your company, its promoters, directors, investors, vision, objectives and its plans in the solar industry
AH: CleanMax Solar is India’ s largest rooftop solar developer, and has been ranked # 1 by a large margin in Bridge to India’ s annual survey in the past 2 years, since the survey began. We focus primarily on the corporate segment, where our market share is around 50 % as per our estimates. We started as a rooftop solar developer in 2011, and have recently expanded into open access solar, with Karnataka’ s first solar farm. We are also exploring energy storage and select international opportunities, but targeting the same corporate segment
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EQ December 2016 www. EQMagPro. com