Solar capacity addition in India has so far been centered on large, grid connected, ground-mounted PV plants. The lack of space for such power plants in a highly urbanized and congested city like Delhi is a challenge for solar energy. But, this is true only if solar deployment is restricted to large, ground mounted power plants. The potential to install rooftop solar PV in a city like Delhi can be tremendous.

• Delhi’s total land area is 1,483 square kilometers
• 700 square kilometers of Delhi’s total area is built-up, which could theoretically give a potential of 58 GW of rooftop solar
• Not every inch of Delhi’s rooftop space is viable for solar, scaling down the potential drastically, but none the less being worth a couple of gigawatts