Sunny days ahead in India's energy sector

Topic : Energy (GS Paper III)

"Solar" has been a frequent buzzword especially in the state of Kerala, but for all the wrong reasons. Let us keep that aside and see what are the better things happening in this sector. Solar energy has great potential in a country like India which is situated in the sub-tropical region and has almost 300 sunny days in an year.

What are the broad objectives regarding solar energy in India?

The Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission(JNNSM) envisages to have 20GW of grid connected and 2GW of off-grid capacity by 2020. This implies 20GW would be supplied to the national electricity grid, while 2GW will be generated and distributed locally without connecting to the grid. The Power Minister has announced a bigger goal of 100GW of solar power by 2022 in the recently held World Economic Forum at Davos.

How will the Government achieve those ?

The Solar Energy Corporation of India(SECI) has been established as a not-for-profit company to supervise the development of solar power in India. SECI has taken up the following projects/ activities.

• Implementation of JNNSM Phase-II – This runs from 2013 till 2017 and includes grid-connected solar power plants and off-grid systems.
• Solar Thermal installations for water/air heating and industrial process.
• Implementation of  Grid Connected Solar Roof-Top scheme.
• Development and dissemination of low cost solar lanterns.
• Solar Mini/Micro Grids having a capacity of 10kW-10MW. These are off-the-grid systems and would be the best option for rural electrification.
• Research and Development including solar resource assessment.

Apart from this there is a plan to build large solar power plants of capacity 1000MW-4000MW (called Ultra Mega Power Plant). One such plant is coming up in the Sambhar area in Rajasthan and is currently the largest in the world. In canal irrigated regions, there are projects for installing solar panels covering thousands of kilometers.

What are the major hurdles ?

The major hurdles are of three types - technical, cost-related and administrative

1) Technical difficulties :

• Shortage of efficient solar photo-voltaic (PV) cells and modules - Currently a large proportion of solar photo-voltaic cells are imported from countries like U.S and China, since domestic production cannot catch up with the demand. The JNNSM has included a Domestic Content Requirement(DCR) provision in the case of solar cells which would help in the growth of domestic manufacturing sector. Consequently India has invoked Anti-Dumping Duties to restrict the import of solar cells from outside. But this has lead to US approaching the WTO on account of violations of international trade.
• Power evacuation - Solar energy generation depends on the sunlight and is not consistent throughout the day. This demands for efficient power evacuation system, to feed the power to the transmission network in a synchronised manner. India does not have a well developed power-evacuation system.

2) The cost-factor :

• The solar-cell manufacturing industry in India is in its nascent stage and hence does not enjoy the advantage of scale economies. This implies since production is low, cost of the good ie the solar cell/module is high. This puts burden on the solar power producers and in turn on the entities in the value chain till the end customer. This is the reason why the power producers has been demanding for the import of solar cells/modules despite the Government's push for indigenous manufacturing through the "Make in India" programme.
• The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy provides 30% subsidy(70% in case of North Eastern states) on the installation cost of a solar photovoltaic power plant. Further a 30% to 40% subsidy is given on solar-lamps and home lighting. 

3) The administrative bottlenecks:

• This is significant in the case of grid-connected systems. The whole system works on State government run distribution companies (or DISCOMS) that are debt-ridden, inefficient and corrupt. Thus the reforms in generation, transmission and distribution of power need to carried on simultaneously. The Central Government has been encouraging the usage of renewable power by enforcing renewable purchase obligation(RPO) on the state utilities. This makes mandatory for the power distributors to purchase a share of power from renewable sources also. But this has been largely unsuccessful on account of the inefficiency of state discoms.
• Another area is the dissemination of information regarding solar-energy. A web-based platform named SOLAR GUIDELINES has been set up with the support from Germany for facilitating dissemination of information and giving latest updates on the development of solar energy projects.

Are the goals ambitious or can they be realised?

Government has taken a two-pronged approach - large centralised(or grid connected) power plants on one hand and small decentralised(or off grid) micro/mini grids and roof-top systems on the other. The former would require large tracts of land, which would face opposition from people. Moreover the synchronisation of such plants with the national grid is cumbersome(remember the large power blackout that happened in 2012). Hence, the ideal model model for India would be the small localised solar systems. This would be specifically helpful for electrification in rural India which faces frequent power-outages. The goals though seem ambitious, are achievable if there is greater political will-power and bureaucratic efficiency.

Next in line : Wind-power in India