Motivated by a desire to live a more sustainable lifestyle, Shilpa and Suneet Kotwal decided to install a solar power system on the rooftop of their bungalow in Pune.
Using solar panels, they run everything from lights, fans, a refrigerator, air conditioners, microwave and other appliances on this energy, saving 90 percent on bills.
The couple planned a grid backed solar photovoltaic (PV) system in the house with a 15 kWp capacity and 20 batteries for storage.
“In the grid-backed setup, we do not feed excess power to the grid, we instead store the excess energy and use it during non-generation hours, say during the nights and cloudy days. So, we have our own backup,” says Suneet.
The entire setup cost the couple Rs 15 lakh and they believe they would get the return on investment within five years.
For Shilpa and Suneet, the first biggest transformation with this setup was to have an uninterrupted power supply and live guilt-free.
“We don’t want to exaggerate but we have forgotten what a power outage is. We only come to know about a power shutdown when we hear the noise of a generator from the nearby hotel,” says Shilpa.
Interestingly, they are also not dependent on the municipal water supply for their water needs. They also run the water pumps using solar energy.
“We already had a borewell. We took the opportunity of relying completely on ground water – from getting drinking water to watering our garden spread across 4,000 sq feet area,” he says.
“We also direct excess water into the ground to recharge the aquifers. One good aspect of this was that our neighbours started getting sufficient water from their borewells even in the summers,” adds Suneet.