The Solar Projects — the installations that made us proud

I started the Solar Projects division at Su-Kam as one of the pioneer companies installing megawatt-scale projects in India. I hired people who had no solar background — because solar itself was non-existent then — and we started bidding. Our first allocation was 2 MW under SECI’s first phase, and from there we installed projects one by one.

01Punjab Engineering College — the first megaproject

Around 2011 we executed the Punjab Engineering College project in Chandigarh — our first megaproject, an on-grid plant won through an open tender amidst huge competition, with a 10-year maintenance commitment. Installation agencies didn’t exist yet; after installation we battled shadow issues; and since there were no audit agencies either, I asked my own team to audit the project — not the right thing, but we learned enormously. After PEC, there was no looking back.

From the Su-Kam Facebook archive

02Institutions that went solar with us

In the press, then on Facebook

03Malawi — wind and sun in the same battery

In 2010 we built the first combined wind-and-solar plant of its kind, electrifying five remote villages in Malawi, Africa — including Chigunda and Mdayaka. The windmills (4.2 kW) came from a Pune supplier; everything else was ours, including a common electronics stage where wind and solar energy charge the same battery bank with one common output. On the coast, you harvest both.

I visited the site personally, and I was very proud to execute this project outside India. I even duplicated it at my own farmhouse — windmill and solar working together — because I see hybrid systems as the future for so many countries, including India.

Hybrid renewables, 2010

04Powering the North-East

In Arunachal Pradesh we delivered a 600 kW grid-feed plant — one of our most successful projects in a region where we eventually worked across all seven North-Eastern states.

For the Assam Rifles we installed off-grid solar at seven locations — 100 and 150 kW plants in a joint venture with REIL (a Rajasthan state government company): they supplied panels, we supplied and installed the batteries and electronics, and we designed a remote monitoring system for all seven sites. Hauling diesel to those far-flung posts had been costly and dangerous; after our systems went in, the generators barely ran — press reports put the savings around ₹11 lakh a year. We even trained the Assam Rifles’ own technical teams to run the plants, and picked up two new distributors along the way.

Defence-grade solar, Myanmar border

05Lohia Awas — 40,000 homes that had never seen light

Under the UP government’s Lohia Awas scheme we installed 100-watt DC solar systems in rural households that had no electricity at all — each running one fan, two lights and mobile charging. The win made The Economic Times, The Times of India, Business Standard and The Hindu Business Line: solar for 40,000 rural households.

The engineering was the easy half. It was a time-bound project: we designed the DC system on schedule, got it approved, and built teams that could install in remote villages across UP. The hard half was everything else — outsourced agencies that moved too slowly, material that got stolen, payments that were a struggle, and a five-year maintenance tail during which even some of our own service staff made money claiming batteries from the company. The project lost money.

National press, 2014

06The mini-grids — free power, real fights

We built three 250 kW solar mini-grids in UP, each connecting five or six villages that had no electricity. Power was free, each home got a 100 W connection with a load controller — and human nature did the rest. People bypassed the controllers, wired up new fans, then irrigation pumps, then more pumps. The battery banks, sized for three days’ backup, were hammered by the overload. Villagers fought with our staff daily; nobody wanted a five-year maintenance posting there, and all three sites became a struggle.

But we were among the first in India to learn — the hard way — what running an off-grid mini-grid really takes. Similar projects came up later; we chose not to bid.

07Beyond India

The projects travelled. We installed 2,000 solar street lights across Gabon — in Kango, Mouila and Bitam, villages hundreds of kilometres from Libreville that had never had lit streets. We electrified 35 remote schools in Rwanda and delivered a 105-site turnkey project there. Our solar PCUs went up on rooftops across Afghanistan, and projects followed in Namibia, South Sudan and beyond.

Indian engineering, African nights

Kunwer Sachdev

Founder of Su-Kam and Kunwwer.ai, and mentor at Su-vastika and several other companies — the “Inverter Man & Solar Man of India.” Read his story →