Here you go, ma’am.

Environmentalists see India as potentially a huge contributor to carbon dioxide emissions as it strives to industrialize. But optimists say India has huge untapped solar energy thanks to its location, just waiting to be exploited.

India receives solar energy equivalent to nearly 5,000 trillion kWh/year, which is far more than the total energy consumption of the country today. By contrast, it produces a negligible amount of solar energy for use - a mere 0.2% of total energy resources.

However, dreams of a solar future for India may be premature. It is encouraging to see that it’s now attained 7th place worldwide in Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Cell production and 9th place in Solar Thermal Systems, but that’s still only just over 2% of the total electricity produced. Power generation from solar thermal energy is still in the experimental stages.
Solar history

The solar PV program began in the mid-1970s in India. While many parts of the world have progressed substantially in basic PV cell production, India has lagged behind. In early 2000, only 9 Indian companies were manufacturing solar cells.

The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy have initiated innovative schemes to accelerate the growth of solar energy. Incentives include subsidies, soft loans, 80% accelerated depreciation, confessional duty on import of raw materials, excise duty exemption on certain devices/systems etc.

The Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA) has a fund to help companies offering affordable credit for the purchase of PV systems.

The Electricity Act (2003), National Electricity Policy (2005) and National Tariff Policy (2006) provide a common framework for the regulation of renewable power in all Indian states.

In the Renewable Energy Policy Statement (2005) the government makes it clear renewables are very much a part of its energy plan: “Despite the fact that the biomass-solar- hydrogen economy is some decades away, it should not make industry and the scientific & technical community of the country unduly complacent into believing that necessary steps for expected changes can wait.”

Present Scenario

So far, many solar water pumping systems for irrigation and drinking water have been installed and subsidized - a total of 7,068 as of September 2006. The majority of the pumps fitted with a 200 watt to 3,000 watt motor are powered with 1,800 Wp PV arrays which can deliver about 140,000 litres of water per day.

Other applications of solar include: thermal uses such as water heating, drying, cooking; lighting, water pumping and communications.
Over 150,000 square meters of collector area has been installed in the country for solar water heating in domestic, industrial and commercial sectors making the cumulative installed collector area over one million square meters.

What Next?

An Expert Committee appointed by the Planning Commission is currently working on India’s future energy policy – and they’re hoping to throw renewable energy sources into the mix. They hope to boost India’s renewable energy percentage to 5% by 2012, though this also places a lot of emphasis on hydro-power.

India has recently proposed to augment cooking, lighting, and motive power with renewable in 600,000 villages by 2032, starting with 10,000 remote off-grid villages by 2012.

But what are the realistic chances that India will emerge as a renewable energy pioneer? It will have to address various problems that stand in the way of solar, even with the fantastic natural resources available. The main problems are unsurprisingly - cost, waste products, and the acquisition of land needed for erecting solar PV arrays.

Although they now cost a 10th of what they did back in the 1980s, solar cells are still mostly economically unviable for power generation purposes.

At present the initial cost of solar energy systems is higher compared to the cost of conventional energy systems as well as the other non-conventional energy systems. However, the estimated unit cost of generation of electricity from solar photovoltaic and solar thermal route is in the range of Rs. 12 -20 per kWh and Rs. 10 - 15 per kWh respectively in India. With present level of technology, solar electricity produced through the photovoltaic conversion route is 4-5 times costlier than the electricity obtained from conventional fossil fuels.

Research into solar continues at The Solar Energy Centre and other leading centres. It is hoped that, in the very near future, breakthroughs in nanotechnology will significantly increase solar cell efficiencies - from around 15% currently to over 50%.

Additionally, the large amount of land required for solar power plants places a big strain on the country’s resources. For instance, a utility-scale power plant needs approximately 1 km sq for every 20-60 megawatts (MW) generated.

So what is the forecast? Even though energy from renewable energy sources is growing rapidly, with markets such as solar cells, wind and biodiesel experiencing annual double digit growth, the overall share is only expected to increase marginally over the coming decades as the demand for energy also grows rapidly.

In India, the scientific focus is deliberately moving towards transforming coal into clean energy as well as harnessing hydropower. The recent surge in nuclear energy is also diverting focus from the solar.

It seems likely that, in the next decades, solar won’t become the predominant energy source, but will only be supported by the Indian government for off-grid production through a decentralized manner. It remains to be seen what part other renewables will play in its energy policy - and whether our fears of another industrial polluting giant are justified.