Credit Scenario 01: Would You Fund This ₹8 Cr Solar + Battery Loan?
A 1.2 MW rooftop solar plus 1 MWh battery file for a Maharashtra textile unit claims ₹190 lakh a year in savings and a 4.2-year payback. It reads clean, but three items in the file change the answer.
Here is a loan file of the kind now reaching NBFC credit committees across Maharashtra: a 1.2 MW rooftop solar plant with a 1 MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) on a textile unit. On the proposal's own numbers it looks fundable. The question is whether those numbers survive a closer look.
At 70% loan-to-value, this is a ₹5.6 cr loan. On the proposal's figures, savings cover the EMI about 1.3x, and the claimed payback of 4.2 years sits inside the 5-year tenor sought, leaving 0.8 years of headroom, provided every assumption holds.
The file as submitted
- Project: 1.2 MW rooftop solar + 1 MWh BESS, textile unit, Maharashtra
- Project cost: ₹8 cr
- Claimed annual savings: ₹190 lakh
- Claimed payback: 4.2 years
- Loan tenor sought: 5 years
- Savings basis: 70% ToD shifting
- Diesel use on site: occasional, during outages only
- Degradation assumed: none shown
The three lines a credit committee should question
Three items in that list would change the answer, and each points to a specific question for the EPC:
- Savings basis: 70% ToD shifting. Show me the load profile. Time-of-day arbitrage only earns on consumption that actually sits inside the peak window.
- Diesel use: occasional, outages only. Is displaced diesel counted in the savings? If the site rarely runs its DG set, there is little diesel for the battery to replace.
- Degradation: none shown. What does year 5 produce? A battery's capacity fades; an EMI does not.
The decision in front of the committee
The committee has four options: sanction as proposed, sanction with conditions, send the file back to the EPC, or decline. A file that reconciles internally is not the same as a file whose savings have been independently checked. The headroom between a 4.2-year payback and a 5-year tenor is only as real as the load shape, the diesel baseline and the degradation curve behind it.
The resolution, with the reworked savings, EMI coverage and payback, is set out in Credit Scenario 01: The Answer.
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