As India’s solar power sector expands rapidly and creates new opportunities for renewable energy industry stakeholders, it also faces a widening talent gap that extends beyond technical skills. According to the recently released Mercom India’s ‘Bridging India’s Solar Talent Gap – Aligning Academia with Industry Needs’ report, employers identified gaps across practical exposure, project execution, manufacturing processes, system design, regulatory understanding, commercial knowledge, troubleshooting, and site readiness.

Amid the skill shortage, India needs structured industry-academia collaborations focused on industry-relevant training to help professionals optimize their talent. To that end, Ahmedabad-based Monark University recently signed an agreement with energy storage technology company Ionextraa Power for a rooftop solar project and research and development (R&D) initiative.

The initiative will focus on renewable energy research, industry-academia collaboration, skill development, innovation, real-time data monitoring, and real-world training to students. The university will work with Ionextraa to establish a Center of Excellence of Solar and Renewable Energy and a research and demonstration facility.

The collaboration includes developing a 200 kW rooftop solar installation which is expected to meet a significant share of the university’s electricity requirements. The project will use TOPCon solar modules together with Sungrow inverters.

The university said Sungrow inverters were selected for their reliability and their proven record in commercial and utility-scale installations. They also provide detailed monitoring and data access, a key consideration for the research initiative.

The university said the collaboration was based on a shared need to understand how solar projects operate in actual conditions and to use that understanding to manage them better.

“The rooftop solar project will not only contribute to meeting the university’s energy requirements but also serve as a live research platform for studying solar project performance, energy generation patterns, and grid interaction under actual operating conditions. By analyzing operational data and developing AI-based models for predictive maintenance and energy forecasting, our faculty and students will gain valuable exposure to industry-relevant research,” said Jeel Goswami, Director, Development, Monark University.

The stakeholders have proposed spending ₹7 million (~$73,736) for the program, which will fund the rooftop solar system, a data lab for data collection and analysis, and future expansion through battery energy storage system (BESS) integration.

The collaboration will focus on developing predictive maintenance models to anticipate faults and performance degradation before they cause downtime; energy forecasting to help plan generation and manage campus loads; grid integration; BESS integration; and data collection.

Ionextraa Power will provide the infrastructure needed for the study, supported by its technical expertise in solar project operation and monitoring. This division of roles lets the university focus on research, learning, and model development, while Ionextraa supplies industry-grade systems and domain knowledge that make the research practical.

“Through our collaboration with Monark University, we aim to study the real-world performance of a rooftop solar installation and explore how AI and data analytics can improve solar project monitoring and maintenance. By combining our industry experience with the university’s research expertise, we aim to translate research outcomes into practical solutions that can reduce avoidable downtime, improve operational decision-making, and contribute to the wider adoption of intelligent and sustainable energy systems,” said Arjun Chaudhari, Director, Ionextraa Power.

The university said the collaboration is designed to address operational challenges such as reactive maintenance, a lack of reliable operational data, forecasting, and grid integration that solar developers, engineering, procurement and construction companies, and operations and maintenance providers face today.

The rooftop solar system at Monark University will serve as a live testbed for these problems. It will generate continuous data to train AI-based predictive maintenance models, and custom data-collection hardware will help close monitoring gaps.

Industry experts have pointed out that greater investment in industry-academia collaboration, skilled talent, pilot projects, and testing facilities can boost India’s clean energy competitiveness by aligning manufacturing growth with stronger R&D.