The Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP) is delighted to invite you to a seminar titled “Power From Your Roof: Promise, Pitfalls and Policy Fixes” on Friday, September 19, 2025, from 2:00 to 3:30 pm (IST) at the CSEP Auditorium, 6, Dr Jose P Rizal Marg, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi – 110021.

The seminar will feature a presentation by Niteesh Shanbog, Research Associate, CSEP. This will be followed by a panel discussion with Vikas Arora, Additional Vice President, BSES Rajdhani Power Limited; Arshi Chadha, Founder, Bridgeway Power and Trillectric; and Abhinav Goyal, Energy Specialist, The World Bank. The seminar will be moderated by Sharath Rao, Fellow, CSEP.

Please note that this is an in-person event only. If you are in Delhi on the day, please join us for the seminar. The event will be available on the CSEP website and YouTube channel upon completion.

Register here to attend

About the event

The PM Surya Ghar Muft Bijli Yojana (PM Yojana) has accelerated rooftop solar in Indian homes. Annual installations have risen from about half a gigawatt (GW) per year before FY 2024-25 to nearly three GW per year in FY 2024-25. For scale, on an annual energy basis—accounting for solar’s daytime-only generation—a 1 GW solar plant can supply electricity to roughly 1.2–1.3 million Indian households.

Challenges remain: weak maintenance practices, a gap between applications and actual installations across states, and uneven construction quality. There is also a pricing mismatch. Today’s net metering policy values electricity the same at all hours, even though evening power (when homes use more) costs distribution companies more, while midday surplus is cheaper. Could rooftop solar paired with storage (hybrid rooftop solar) help by storing daytime energy for evening use?

On the innovation front, peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading is gaining traction, enabling individuals and businesses to buy and sell solar power directly. Pilots using blockchain have been launched in Uttar Pradesh and Delhi, and Karnataka notified implementation of P2P solar transaction regulations in August 2024.

The seminar brings together three stakeholders – Vikas Arora from BSES Rajdhani Power Limited (local utility), Arshi Chadha from Trillectric (system integrator and hardware manufacturer), and Abhinav Goyal from the World Bank. We will discuss the above topics and understand what is being done to address PM Yojana concerns, hybrid rooftop solar, and emerging regulatory development.

Presenter

Niteesh Shanbog

Niteesh Shanbog began his career as a Junior Research Fellow at Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)–Central Electronics Engineering Research Institute CEERI). His work reflects a deep interest in the power sector, especially renewables and the energy transition. He has contributed to projects on energy and capacity markets, indigenous water-treatment plant design, and modelling drought impacts. 

Panellists

Vikas Arora

Vikas Arora has 20+ years in power distribution spanning smart grids/metering, renewables, battery storage, business development/consulting, revenue cycle, and key-customer management. He is Additional Vice President at BSES Rajdhani Power Limited (Reliance Infra group), managing revenue cycles for large industrial & commercial consumers. Earlier, he spent nearly two decades with Tata Power, contributing to the turnaround of Delhi distribution company (discom) and the transformation of the newly acquired Odisha discoms.

Arshi Chadha 

Arshi Chadha is the Founder of Bridgeway Power and Trillectric, focused on accelerating India’s clean energy transition. With experience deploying over 20 MW of rooftop and community solar, Arshi is building protocol-grade infrastructure that makes distributed solar and storage reliable, verifiable, and consumer-friendly.

Abhinav Goyal

Abhinav Goyal is an Energy Specialist with the World Bank’s South Asia Infrastructure team, with 15+ years across Multilateral Development Banks, International agencies, and the private sector. He supports clean-energy programs spanning distributed renewables, large-scale RE grid integration, and critical minerals strategy. His work includes mobilizing concessional finance, structuring PPPs, and designing market instruments to speed the energy transition. Previously, he worked at GIZ and the Centre for Science and Environment on renewable-energy policy and advisory in India.

Moderator

Sharath Rao

Sharath Rao distils 24 years of clean-energy work—from rigorous research to policy design to field deployment. As a Fellow at CSEP’s Energy, Natural Resources & Sustainability programme, he shapes rooftop solar, green-tariff, carbon-finance, and distribution-reform solutions for the Ministries of Power and New and Renewable Energy. Earlier, he founded and led Bruhat Energy (electronics manufacturing; rooftop solar, and solar-pumping installations) and served as Senior Research Scientist at the Centre for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP), Bangalore.

All content reflects the individual views of the speakers. The Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP) does not hold an institutional view on any subject.

Please contact Gurmeet Kaur at GKaur@csep.org for general queries and Ayesha Manocha at AManocha@csep.org for media queries.