Uttar Pradesh Solar Policy and it's Solar Highlights

Uttar Pradesh, or UP as it is fondly called is the state with the highest population in India. It is located in the northern part of the country and has Lucknow as the capital city. Some of the best known cities in India such as Varanasi, Kanpur, Allahabad etc are a part of Uttar Pradesh. Despite a massive demand for power due to its shortage, UP only has 269.26MW of connected solar power. A large majority of this, 125.76MW was commissioned in the Financial Year 2016/17. The state defined its Rooftop Solar Power Plant policy back in the year 2014-15, and a target of generation of 20MW from rooftop solar plants was set till March 2017. It was made a mandate that at least 25 percent area of the chair area of the office buildings in the government and public institutes will be utilised for the installation of rooftop solar power plants. The present solar policy of UP is effective till March 2017, and will soon be up for renewal with new targets being set. The target of achieving 500 MW of grid connected power till March of 2017 looks to have been missed. But with a new government lead by the BJP, a political party that has been giving a lot of push to solar in the last couple of years from the centre, it is expected that Uttar Pradesh will be a large contributor in the march towards the 100GW target by 2022.