Devolving power
Roof top solar system, a dominant rural commodity in Nepal, which caters to the lighting needs of over 600,000 off-grid rural households in the country, is now slowly gaining new admirers in the urban centres as well. With the recent government’s decisions and declarations to increase its solar spending to appease urban consumers amid the severe power shortages in the country, a new debate has emerged on how the government regulations, policies and expenditures could be best employed for the growth of solar rooftop systems. Different views In Nepal, two schools of thoughts primarily dominate the rooftop solar market today. First, the government should boost the total solar energy demand through promotional activities and subsidy packages. This ‘Keynesianism’ has stimulated the growth of renewable infrastructures providing lighting and cooking needs through various green technologies in the far-flung rural hills and plains of the country for over a decade. Alongside, another school of thought is rapidly emerging and gaining supporters. It argues that the government should provide rooftop solar owners an opportunity to sell surplus energy to the Nepal Electricity Authority’s (NEA) electrical grid. As households and businesses in urban centres are already investing large sums in alternative energy facilities to cope with the routine power cuts, proponents of the second school of thought argue that both the awareness and the willingness to pay for the rooftop systems are sufficiently high. Besides, prices of solar or photovoltaic cells, which convert sunlight directly into electricity, are falling globally. With the technological advancements, best available and efficient systems are entering the market every next day. A recent study conducted by researchers at the Oxford University has shown that the cost of a watt of solar capacity has reduced from $256 in 1956 to about $0.82 in 2013—a drop in price by a factor of 2330.
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Devolving power
