After attending the Intersolar Conference and Exhibition last week (14 Dec) in Mumbai (India), I truly felt that India is now on the tipping point of Solar Energy Development. Ofcourse there are some challenges, but I sincerely hope that all goes well.

My article covering some points I gathered during the conference is posted here:

> Tipping Point for Solar Power in India

I'll be posting more developments and commentary about the development of Solar Power in India, the place where the Sun 'shines' ever so brightly.

Intro to India's National Solar Mission

This is an extract from the original document to be found here.


Introduction

The National Solar Mission is a major initiative of the Government of India and State Governments to promote ecologically sustainable growth while addressing India’s energy security challenge.  It will also constitute a major contribution by India to the global effort to meet the challenges of climate change.

Importance and relevance of solar energy for India

• Costs: Solar is currently high on absolute costs compared to other sources of power such as coal.  The objective of the Solar Mission is to create conditions, through rapid scale-up of capacity and technological innovation to drive down costs towards grid parity.  The Mission anticipates achieving grid parity by 2022 and parity with coal-based thermal power by 2030
• Scalability: India is endowed with vast solar energy potential. About 5,000 trillion kWh per year energy  is incident over India’s land area with most parts receiving 4-7 kWh per sq. m per day. Hence both technology routes for conversion of solar radiation into heat and electricity, namely, solar thermal and solar photovoltaics, can effectively be harnessed providing huge scalability for solar in India.

Objectives and Goals

The objective of the National Solar Mission is to establish India as a global leader in solar energy, by creating the policy conditions for its diffusion across the country as quickly as possible.

Salient Features:

• NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam (NVVN) will be the single buyer of the power produced by Independent Power Producers (IPPs) selected under the mission. It will be bought at fixed rates for 25 years. Rates will be fixed by the Central Regulatory Electricity Commission (CERC)
• Bundling of solar power with unallocated coal-based power from NTPC and selling to 'State Utilities' at a cheaper price.
• Fixing an attractive tariff of INR 17.91 for Solar PV and INR 15.31 for Solar Thermal projects that are commissioned before March 2013. Average commercial tariff rates in India are now (year 2010) around INR 8 per unit (kWh)
• Fixing up solar purchase obligations at 0.25% on total power consumption for State Electricity Boards.
• Tax holidays for 10 years, customs and excise duty concessions, an accelerated depreciation adjusting Generation Based Incentive

Read more from the original document to be found here.

Interesting presentation on boosting Solar demand

Came across this interesting presentation that offers some pointers on boosting demand for Solar energy, although its 4 times more expensive than the alternatives. Good insights and I will probably work on these pointers all my life...

Solar 2010 – Conference & Exhibition

View more presentations from EAI.