Solar power in India Totally Explained

Everything about Solar Power In India totally explained

==Annual insolation==With about 200 clear sunny days in a year, India's theoretical solar power reception, just on its land area, is about 5 EWh/year (for example = 5000 trillion kWh/yr ~ 600 TW). The daily average solar energy incident over India varies from 4 to 7 kWh/m² with about 2300 - 3200 sunshine hours per year, depending upon location. The Grid-interactive solar power as on Jun, 2007 was merely 2.12 MW. Government-funded solar energy in India only accounted for approximately 6.4 megawatt-years of power as of 2005. The cost of production ranges from Rs 15 to Rs 30 per unit compared to around Rs 2 to Rs 6 per unit for conventional thermal energy.

Government policy

The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) have initiated schemes and incentives - like subsidy, soft loan, confessional duty on raw material imports, excise duty exemption on certain devices/systems etc - to boost the production and use of solar energy systems. The Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA) provides revolving fund to financing and leasing companies offering affordable credit for the purchase of PV systems. An Expert Committee constituted by the Planning Commission has prepared an Integrated Energy Policy which envisions a 10 million square meter solar collector area, to be set up by 2022, and capable of conserving electricity equivalent to that generated from a 500 MW power plant. However the Indian government support is insignificant compared to the support solar enery receives by governments in Europe and East Asia.

Solar Funds and Investments

With high deployment price as the main hurdle before a solar market, various organisations have developed innovative funding schemes to catalyse solar's attractiveness. One of the most successful example is the solar loan programme in India, sponsored by UNEP Two other projects were proposed, one a 50 MW photovoltaics plant and the other a 200 MW solar chimney. None of these have been completed. The Rajashtan government, however, has set aside a 35,000 km² area of the Thar desert for solar power.

PV manufacture in India

Current PV manufacturing in India includes:

BP-Tata joint venture
Moser-Baer signed up for a thin film Si plant provided by Applied Materials
Solar Semiconductor Pvt in Hyderabad, AP

Solar engineering training

The Australian government has awarded UNSW A$5.2 million to train next-generation solar energy engineers from Asia-Pacific nations, specifically India and China, as part of the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (APP). Certain programmes are designed to target for rural solar usage development.

Applications

Rural electrification

Lack of electricity infrastructure is one of the main hurdles in the development of rural India. India's grid system is considerably under-developed, with major sections of its populace still surviving off-grid. As on 2004 there are about 80,000 unelectrified villages in the country. Of these villages, 18,000 couldn't be electrified through extension of the conventional grid. A target for electrifying 5000 such villages was fixed for the Tenth National Five Year Plan (2002-2007). As on 2004, more than 2700 villages and hamlets had been electrified mainly using SPV systems.

Cooling

Another for example is the cost of energy expended on temperature control - a factor squarely influencing regional energy intensity. With cooling load demands being roughly in phase with the sun's intensity, cooling from intense solar radiation could be an attractive energy-economic option in the subcontinent.

Challenges and Constraints

Land scarcity

Per capita land availabiity is a scarce resource in India. Dedication of land area for exclusive installation of solar cells might have to compete with other necessities that require land. The amount of land required for utility-scale solar power plants - currently approximately 1 sq km for every 20-60 megawatts (MW) generated

Latent potential

Major think-tanks have designed blueprints for India's transition to renewable energy - that rein on its carbon emissions, without compromising its economic growth. For example, in one of the envisioned scenarios, renewable resources like solar could become the backbone of India’s economy by 2050. in the sunny tropical belt, India's very long-term solar potential has been observed to be unparalleled in the world, since the subcontinent has the ideal combination of both high solar insolation

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