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.
To enhance green energy proportion in the energy basket, the Government has amended the Power Tariff Policy to stipulate that the States' solar power purchase obligation should go up to 3% by 2022.
ReplyDeleteA decision to this effect was taken by the Cabinet. An official statement said that “The solar power purchase obligation for States may start with 0.25% in Phase I (by 2013) and go up to 3% by 2022 adding that this will be complemented by solar specific Renewable Energy Certificate mechanism to allow solar power generation companies to sell certificates to the utilities to meet their solar power purchase obligations.”
The statement said that the present amendment is in accordance with the National Solar Mission strategy. The amendment will come into effect from the date of its publication in the official gazette.
A senior official said that “A need was felt to prescribe specific percentages in the Tariff Policy, which would guide the State Electricity Regulators to meet the requirements under the National Solar Mission.”
To ensure that the State Electricity Regulators could fix a percentage of energy purchase from solar power under the renewable purchase obligation, the Ministry of Power had proposed amendment to the Tariff Policy, 2006.
(Sourced from BL)