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Features of Solar energy in India

India is both densely populated and has high solar insulation, providing an ideal combination for solar energy in India. Much of the country does not have an electrical grid, so one of the first applications of solar energy has been for water pumping, to begin replacing India's four to five million diesel powered water pumps, each consuming about 3.5 kilowatts, and off-grid lighting. Some large projects have been proposed, and a 35,000 km² area of the Thar Desert has been set aside for solar power projects, sufficient to generate 700 to 2,100 gigawatts.

In July 2009, India unveiled a $19 billion plan to produce 20 GW of solar power by 2020. Under the plan, solar-powered equipment and applications would be mandatory in all government buildings including hospitals and hotels.
18 November 2009, it was reported that India is ready to launch its Solar Mission under the National Action Plan on Climate Change, with plans to generate 1,000 mw of power by 2013.

Annual insulation:

With about 300 clear sunny days in a year, India's theoretical solar power reception, just on its land area is about 5 PWh/year. The daily average solar energy incident over India varies from 4 to 7 kWh/m2 with about 2,300–3,200 sunshine hours per year, depending upon location. This is far more than current total energy consumption. For example, even assuming 10% conversion efficiency for PV modules, it will still be thousand times greater than the likely electricity demand in India by the year 2015.

Present Status:

Installed capacity:

The amount of solar energy produced in India is merely 0.4% compared to other energy resources. The Grid-interactive solar power as of June 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. However, as of October 2009, India is currently ranked number one along with the United States in terms of potential solar power generation capacity.

Still unaffordable:

Solar energy is currently prohibitive due to high initial costs of deployment. To spawn a thriving solar market, the technology needs to be competitively cheaper — i.e. attaining cost parity with fossil or nuclear energy. India is heavily dependent on coal and foreign oil — a phenomenon likely to continue until non-fossil / renewable energy technology becomes economically viable in the country. 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, concessional duty on raw material imports, excise duty exemption on certain devices/systems etc. — to in Europe and East Asia.

Thar Desert:

In 1996 Amoco/Enron Solar Power Development planned to build a 50 MW solar photovoltaic plant in the Thar Desert near Jaisalmer in Rajasthan state. 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 Rajasthan government, however, has set aside a 35,000 km² area of the Thar desert for solar power. Astonfield Rajasthan Solar Pvt Ltd, promoted by Astonfield Group of Companies has started developing the first solar PV project in Rajasthan, which will be commissioned by early 2010.

PV manufacture in India:

Current PV manufacturing in India includes:
• Titan Energy Systems Ltd, Hyderabad
• SHARP (JAPAN). BP-Tata joint venture.
•  Moser-Baer signed up for a thin film Si plant provided by Applied Materials. Solar Semiconductor Pvt in Hyderabad, AP. Green Brilliance Pvt. Ltd.
•  ICOMM TELE Limited
• Waaree Energies Ltd. Surat, Gujarat, India
• KCK Energy Systems
• Jain Irrigation Systems Ltd., Jalgaon, Maharashtra

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 of 2004 there are about 12,000 unelectrified villages in the country. Of these villages, 18,000 could not be electrified through extension of the conventional grid. A target for electrifying 5,000 such villages was fixed for the Tenth National Five Year Plan (2002–2007). As on 2004, more than 2,700 villages and hamlets had been electrified mainly using SPV systems. Developments on cheap solar technology are considered as a potential alternative that allows an electricity infrastructure comprising of a network of local-grid clusters with distributed electricity generation. That could allow bypassing, or at least relieving the need of installing expensive, and loss, long-distance centralized power delivery systems and yet bring cheap electricity to the masses.

Agricultural support:

Solar Water Pumping System:

Solar water pumping systems are used for irrigation and drinking water. The majority of the pumps are fitted with a 200–3,000 watt motor that are powered with 1,800 Wp PV arrays which can deliver about 140,000 liters of water/day from a total head of 10 meters. By 30 September, 2006, a total of 7,068 solar water pumping systems have been installed.

Harvest processing:

Solar driers are used to dry harvests before storage.

Cooling:

Another e.g. 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 ca-pita land availability 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 km² for every 20–60 megawatts (MW) generated — could pose a strain on India's available land resource. The architecture more suitable for most of India would be a highly distributed, individual rooftop power generation systems, all connected via a local grid. However, erecting such an infrastructure — which doesn't enjoy the economies of scale possible in mass utility-scale solar panel deployment — needs the market price of solar technology deployment to substantially decline so that it attracts the individual and average family size household consumer. That might be possible in the future, since PV is projected to continue its current cost reductions for the next decades and be able to compete with fossil fuel.

Slow progress:

While the world has progressed substantially in production of basic silicon mono-crystalline photovoltaic cells, India has fallen short to achieve the worldwide momentum. India is now in 7th place worldwide in Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Cell production and 9th place in Solar Thermal Systems with nations like Japan, Europe, China, and the US currently ranked far ahead. Globally, solar is the fastest growing source of energy (though from a very small base) with an annual average growth of 35%, as seen during the past few years.

Latent potential:

Think-Tanks have recommended that India should adopt a policy of developing solar power as a dominant component of the renewable energy mix, since being a densely populated region in the sunny tropical belt; the subcontinent has the ideal combination of both high solar isolation and a big potential consumer base density. In one of the scenarios, India could not only rein its long-term carbon emissions, but do so without compromising on its economic growth potential, with renewable resources like solar becoming the backbone of India’s economy by 2050.

About the Author

Prakash Singh is the author of Features of Solar energy in India. LED Based Street Light,Solar Charge Controllers,Path Way Light.

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