Mumbai campus buzz: Schools, colleges turn to the Sun

“We have been teaching the students about saving electricity, but we wanted to practise what we preach,” said principal Sona Mattoo Dhingra. Dhingra said that the school plans to reduce its dependence on power grids by 50 per cent.

The panels have been installed at a cost of Rs 16 lakh on an elevated frame on one part of the roof. A total of 21.6 kW (kilo Watt) of direct current (DC) is generated, which is then converted to alternating current (AC).

On holidays, the power generated through the solar panels is redirected to the grid, for which the school earns credit points, in accordance with the net-metering scheme.

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“The credit points we earn from the grid for redirecting the unused power is encouraging,” said Dhingra.

While it is too early for the school to quantify the savings from the panels, another school in Andheri is already reaping the benefits of the solar panels it installed in January.

“During the summer, our electricity bill came down from Rs30,000 a month to about Rs1,400 a month,” said Thomas Vaz, principal of Holy Family High School, Andheri. He said the school had already recovered its investment in the project.

Holy Family High School was the first school in Maharashtra to benefit from the net-metering scheme. A 40 kW system, with three units, generates at least 200 units of electricity a day. Like Children’s Academy, the school also redirects its excess power to the grid and earns credits.

Since the installation of the panels, the school has redirected 500 units of electricity to the grid, said Kevin Rego. A former student of Holy Family, Rego works with BSB Solar, an organisation that helped the school install the solar panels. Principal Vaz said that since the school switched to solar panels, students have been more careful about consumption.

The Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, already generates 700 kW of electricity using solar panels and aims to scale it up to 1,000 kW .

“Within the academic campus of IIT-B, 10 per cent of the power consumed is generated through solar panels,” said Chetan Singh Solanki from the department of Energy Science and Engineering at IIT-B.