Credit Scenario 01 Answer: Three Assumptions That Carried a Solar + BESS Loan

Credit Scenario 01 was a 1.2 MW rooftop solar plus 1 MWh battery project on a Maharashtra textile unit: ₹8 cr project cost, ₹190 lakh of claimed annual savings, a 4.2-year payback and a 5-year loan tenor sought. The file looked clean. Savings covered the EMI about 1.3x, payback landed inside the tenor, and the proposal's own numbers reconciled.

But three assumptions carried the whole case.

The three assumptions

1. ToD arbitrage. Seventy percent of the savings came from time-of-day arbitrage. On this load shape most consumption sits outside the peak window, so the battery earns a fraction of what the proposal assumed.
2. No degradation modelled. Add standard capacity fade and one augmentation, and year-10 savings fall well below year 1. The EMI does not.
3. Occasional diesel use. Diesel replacement is the lever that usually makes a C&I battery pay back, and it was not available at this site.

Claimed vs reviewed

Rework those three and the file changes shape:

• Annual savings (year one): ₹190 lakh claimed → roughly ₹165 lakh reviewed
• EMI coverage: 1.3x claimed → about 1.1x reviewed
• Payback: 4.2 years claimed → past the five-year tenor sought

The verdict: not a reject, but not sanctionable as proposed

This file did not need to be declined. It needed different terms. Any one of these would have put it on a sound footing:

• A smaller battery, sized to the load that actually sits in the peak window
• The savings claim rebuilt on demand-charge reduction rather than ToD shifting
• A longer tenor that matches a realistic, degradation-adjusted payback

An independent check does not kill deals. It fixes the terms.