In January this year, the government launched Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission to make solar power a reality in India. The mission sees solar becoming a large part of our energy mix and set a target to add 20 GW of solar power by 2022. There are sceptics who say we cannot add so much solar power in such a short time, that this much solar power is unviable and impractical. I believe, we have no choice but to hit, and surpass, this target.

To put this into perspective, in the next 15 years, India will add about 300GW of electricity generation. That´s double of what we generate today. Most of our existing generation is based on fossil fuels, which pollute our air. If we continue down the same path, imagine how unbreathable our air will become.

India can develop without damaging the environment

The advance of industrial development unfortunately brought with it environmental damage. It´s no surprise that the largest contributors to emissions are the most industrialised, economically rich countries. The only way to limit environmental damage, it seemed, was to also limit economic growth.

But, this is a compromise no country is willing to make. With solar energy, we can finally break this compromise. Solar is a clean and abundant fuel source that can fulfil all our power needs. Consider that less than 10% of our deserts, covered with solar power plants, can completely power India´s economy for years to come.

Solar power will soon cost no more than grid power

Today, solar energy is expensive than conventional sources of energy . Solar plants need tariffs of 16/kwh or so to remain viable. Compare this to conventional plants, which are viable below 3/kwh. Soon, this gap will disappear.
In fact, solar-power costs are coming down. Across both photovoltaic (PV) and solar thermal technologies, innovations are now being implemented that will drastically reduce costs.

In PV, efficiencies are rising while material and process costs are coming down. In solar thermal, operating temperatures are increasing and components are becoming commoditised. In the next seven to 10 years, solar power will be at par with some fossil-fuel power.

India can lead the way to low-cost solar

The Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC), which sets the electricity tariffs, has issued guidelines for solar power that would demand significant cost reductions. Also, India´s engineering talent pool is ideally skilled to drop costs further. Our experience in conventional power plants across electrical, control systems, thermodynamics and steam turbines, gives us rich technical expertise. Our history of optimising costs for India gives us rich experience. Such a skilled talent pool can re-engineer the plants to lower costs.

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23.08.2010,

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