Solar PV Generation: Energy experts stress credit to SMEs
Aftab Ahmed
Islamabad: Electricity generation through solar PV has a lot of importance. Energy experts have urged the government to give easy loans to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) for solar PV generation in Pakistan.
With the passage of time, solar generation has attained much importance in Pakistan following the outages in the past governments.
All big economies consider SMEs as a key driver in economic growth. This may also happen in Pakistan’s economy if the government gives credit to SMEs for generation through renewable energy.
They stressed the liberalization of Solar PV generation in Pakistan paving way for increasing power purchase agreement (PPA) based agreements. In the meantime, they have stressed giving credit to SMEs for solar projects.
Meanwhile, speakers observed during the discussion that the government is not giving subsidies to the SMEs involved in implementing the PPA model even though SMEs can play an important role in solar electricity generation.
This, the speakers opined, can be addressed through easy loans, grants, crediting schemes under the State Bank renewable finance, and introduction of the feed-in tariff for the deployment of solar PV generation projects.
Furthermore, the speakers maintained the existing power sector is so problematic that it warrants a careful study of the concept before taking any concrete steps for implementation.
Speakers urged enhancing public-private partnership, streamlining financial instruments in and paving grounds for increasing power purchase agreement (PPA) contracts. This is the only way forward for creating a conducive environment for third party intervention in solar PV generation in the country.
They stated this in the consultative session ‘Prospects of Third-Party Intervention Framework and Business Models for Photovoltaic (PV) based Distributed Generation’,. Institute of Policy Studies (IPS), Islamabad arranged it to assess and discuss business models to foster solar PV generation uptake for commercial and industrial power sector consumers.
Former Federal Secretary Water and Power Mirza Hamid Hasan chaired the event.
Meanwhile, the participants argued that high-end tariffs and load-shedding are the primary drivers behind the shift of consumers towards the alternate source of cheap energy, as usage of solar PV generation facilities, vis-à-vis net-metering are on the rise in the country. In addition to it, NEPRA has to regulate the proliferation of PPA business models so that the record of each installed capacity remains in place, they emphasized.
