We are also looking at venturing into providing mounting solutions for asbestos roofs, says HIMAMSU POPURI, CEO & Managing Director, Nuevosol Energy Pvt Ltd
What are the major sectors in renewable energy space where you feel that immense possibilities exist and why?
I would undoubtedly say that Solar is the sector to go by any day, not that we are into it, but the potential it holds is immense, given the ambitious target of 100GW laid by the Indian government. The wind sector has reached its saturation, the west and east coast is already occupied where wind energy is usable economically, India is not a windy country as such. Hydro has its execution difficulties, especially pertaining to environment, as it requires heavy resettlement programs; also we are disturbing the natural habitat of many species in re-directing the river’s path. Solar has no environmental effects what so ever, and the execution pace too is very less, the scalability in solar cannot be matched by
other energy sources. 1 MW solar plant takes about 2 months from scratch to commissioning, whereas wind and hydro have longer lead times. All these factors play a positive role in pushing the solar sector to be the sector to vouch for.
What is the role Nuevosol Energy would be playing in the India Infrastructure growth story?
Nuevosol is a dedicated turnkey solution provider for module mounting structures in the cluttered solar market space of India. In simpler words, we design, manufacture and install module mounting structures for solar PV projects, be it ground mount or roof mount. Our clients are typically the companies that bid for solar PV projects in the Indian states and union territories. Coming to the modus operandi, the successful bidder comes to us specifying the project’s size and location, our engineers visit the site and do the initial inspection, the reports of the visit are analyzed and the structure that is suitable to the area is designed keeping in view the wind load conditions, soil conditions, and climatic
conditions of the site. This design is shared with the client, when we get a final go ahead from his end, we start the components manufacturing, simultaneously dispatch schedules are drawn and dispatches are made to the site for structure installation. Post structure installation the PV modules are fastened to the structure and they stay put for 25 years. Given the niche space we are
operating in, I would say that we have created a market for mounting structures and pushing the industry to concentrate on the importance of
customized and optimized structures to achieve grid parity, which is the ultimate goal of the solar sector. All components of a solar power plant, namely panels, batteries, inverters, etc are off the shelf products where the scope for cost cutting is minimal, if there needs to be optimization it happens only in the mounting structure space, and we are happy to be a part of having projects executed at a reasonable
cost by helping our clients win bids at a competitive price.
Nuevosol Energy is a five year old company please takes us through the important milestones of the company?
Established in September 2011, in our first fiscal we executed projects amounting to 50MW, and we have doubled our execution pace ever since, by 2012-2013, we stood at 200MWs, 2013-2014 it was 500MWs, 2014-2015 – 800MWs and 2015-2016 it was 1500MWs(unaudited).
We have couple of firsts to our credit as well. We were the first to execute a MW scale project in any Indian airport, first to reach 1GW of
installations, first to provide solutions for standing seam and Klip-Lok roofing sheets. We were the first to reach an installation pace of
2.7MW/day, there are many other such milestones that we have touched and surpassed.
What does order book look like for 2016-17? What are the major orders in the bag?
Keeping in view the confidentiality agreements we cannot reveal the client details but, I can say that we have at least 500MW worth projects lined up until the second quarter of 2016-2017. These include ground mount and rooftop. They are spread over the states of Maharshtra, Telangana, AP, Punjab, MP, Karnataka and Jharkhand. If we go into the specifics, there is 80 MW in Karnataka, 50 MW in Madhya Pradesh, these are some of the ultra mega projects in hand.
What are the latest technological trends in Rooftop Top Solar mount system? Have Nuevosol Energy introduced new products in Rooftop
Top Solar mount system in the last quarter?
The latest trend I would say is that many warehouses, automobile industries are shifting to standing seam or Klip Lok roofs given their benefits
of lower leakage, ease of execution over regular trapezoidal profiles roofs. Developing clamping solutions to mount panels on these roofs is a
challenge, as there are many profiles of these roofs available in the market. Every such project needs customized design of the clamp and Nuevosol is known for this customization, we have executed 800kWs of these projects with varying roof profiles. We are also looking at venturing into providing mounting solutions for asbestos roofs, provided the asbestos sheeting has the load bearing capacity.
What is your view on the MSIPS policy and how beneficial has this been for the Indian manufacturers?
While the incentives under the MSIPS for Solar PV in India is a welcoming change, one thing needs to be established here that we are still a
import focused solar market when it comes to modules, the technology here is still not up to the mark. But, its not apt to blame the PV manufacturers here, we need to agree that the countries exporting PV cells had a head start of at least 10 years with respect to technology and R&D. We are yet to pick up pace to match their proficiency. The fruits or MSIPS can be seen 2 to 3 years from now.
In India most of the roofs are flat, what is the solar mount rail system you provide for easy installation and operation?
If you are referring to the flat RCC roofs we have low elevation and elevated ballast structures that are non penetrative and are DIY kits. Coming to metal roofs, we have customized solutions for every kind of roof profile. In the rooftop space we have installed 35MW of structures which include Flat RCC roofs, curved metallic roofs, inclined metallic roofs and the profiles include standing seam, trapezoidal, Klip Lok roofs.
How often in a year one needs to adjust the angle to sun for optimization?
The number of angles depend on the location of the project, if it’s in southern part of India there can be anywhere around three to four tilt
angles. If it’s in the northern part of India, tilt is not proposed unless insisted by the client, as North India has very little North-South movement of the Sun compared to the South and fixed tilt structure is enough to attain the desired generation.
What would be the percentage cost of mount racking in the total cost of per MW installation?
The cost per MW changes with the type of solution that is prescribed. There are many types of solutions in ground mount itself, fixed tilt, seasonal tilt, sun tracking and in rooftops we have to customize for each and every project, so the cost is a very dynamic and will be varying with each product. However, the typical cost per MW for any project is 10-15% of the total project’s cost. The price range Nuevosol offers is between Rs. 2.5/Wp to Rs. 10/Wp depending on the product.
