Solar power to relieve the burden of power-starved states soon

16 Jun 2011 Evaluate

Indian government, considering mitigating the rising demand of power and other various hurdles to the power-starved states, has launched Solar Mission. Under this mission government has planned to generate solar energy up to 20 gigawatts (GW) from zero by 2020. Government has also spared 35000 km area in Thar Desert for the same. This area will generate 700 to 2,100 GW power which is considered to be sufficient to fulfill the requirement. Government plans to make compulsory usage of solar energy in all government buildings, hospitals and hotels. Prior to 2009 India’s solar energy generation was less than 1% of its total energy requirement.

To accomplish the Solar Mission government invited bids to build solar plants; the winning bids are determined by the electricity tariff that they accept as viable. Government was flooded with bids for the first batch of projects rolling out in December. However, the solar energy is expensive due to high cost of production which ranges from Rs 15 to Rs 30 per unit compared to around Rs 5 to Rs 8 per unit for conventional thermal energy. Also another major hurdle is scarcity of land, as India is densely populated.

Germany, the world's top solar power producer with about 17 GW installed by end-2010, is considering cutting incentives for photovoltaic energy by an additional six percentage points in another step on March 1, 2012. However, this move by a lead solar power producer has not influenced any investors in India’s solar mission. 'The entire solar industry is no longer worried about the upheavals that are taking place in the European markets because they find a very new and very promising market is developing in India,' said Debashish Majumdar, chairman and managing director of Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA).

Germany, Spain, Italy, Japan and the United States are the leading producers of solar power in the world.

At present, government is right on track to meet the initial target of 700 MW of solar power at cost of $2.2 billion, as India has about 300 clear sunny days and if everything goes well solar energy will contribute up to one eighth of the current installed base by 2022.

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