Do you have any more data on solar energy projects in India other than home based photo voltic system.
World's Largest Solar Energy Project in India
Now this is a world record worth talking about!
The Business Standard is reporting that, US-based Clinton Foundation investing developing the world's lagest solar energy project in Gujarat, India. The project is currently in its planning phases, it's an 'Integrated Solar City' project with a capacity to generate 5000 megawatts (5 Gigawatts).
Over Five times the size of the current largest solar project in the world.
The project, expected to cost Rs 20,000 crore (approximately $475-million), as said its an 'Integrated Solar City', all the raw materials including glass and panels will be produced on site, bringing down the productivity cost so the power produced will cost around Rs 4 ($0.10) per unit.
The Government of Gujarat is considering a Kutch or Banaskanta as favorable lacation for this project. About five times the capacity of a typical coal or nuclear plant, this project would certainly a big step in the right direction towards the green energy. Recently prime minister Manmohan Singh announced that solar power would be a key part of his plan to deal with climate change.
The current largest solar energy project in the world is a solar thermal plant in the Mojave Desert being developed by BrightSource, with an eventual capacity of up to 900 megawatts.
India connects first solar power plant with grid
Abandoned thermal power plant is converted to 2-MW photovoltaic solar project in West Bengal.
Dishergarh Power Supply (DPSC) said today it has started operations at the first photovoltaic solar power plant to be connected to the electric grid in India.
The 2-megawatt solar project in Jamuria, West Bengal, was built at the site of an abandoned 6-MW coal-based thermal power plant. DPSC converted its 8-acre site with the help of Green Energy Development, installing 9,000 230-watt crystalline solar modules.
Although a relatively small solar plant by global standards, the companies say the solar plant is the largest in the country. India's government has set a goal to spend nearly $20 billion during the next 30 years to increase solar installations from almost nothing today to 20 gigawatts by 2020 (see Indias new climate plan aims to set 20 GW solar goal). Among its initiatives, The National Solar Mission is expected to offer a 10-year tax holiday and exemption from customs and excise duties on specific equipment and other project materials (see Inside cleantech India: Kal, Aaj aur Kal!).
The companies spent about Rs 34 crore ($7.1 million) to build the 2-MW solar plant, which is expected to generate 3 million units of electricity a yearenough to power 2,000 rural or 500 urban households. An equivalent-sized coal-based thermal power plant would generate 7 lakh metric tons (700,000 metric tons) of carbon dioxide emissions a day.
DPSC plans to buy the electricity for Rs 5 ($0.10) per unit to distribute to customers in the Asansol-Raniganj belt. The project, which is also set to receive government incentives of Rs 10 per unit, is expected to generate Rs 4.8 crore ($1 million) per year.
India's Solar Mission Projects 20 GW Of Power By 2020
The solar mission, approved recently by the government of India projects a massive expansion in installed solar capacity, and aims to reduce the price of electricity generated from solar energy to match that from fossil fuels by 2030.
The ambitious mission hopes to generate 20 GW of solar power by 2020, to be upped to 100 GW by 2030 and 200 GW by 2050.
Officials say the US$19 billion plan shows that the country is serious about its intention to stem global warming, ahead of the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen in December.
A detailed road map has been drawn up to 2020. By then, according to the mission document, solar lighting will be available for 20 million households and 42 million tonnes of CO2 emissions will be saved annually by the switch to solar energy. The government plans to create a solar fund with initial investment of $1.1 billion and build it up by taxing fossil fuels and the power generated from them 0.1 cents for every kWh produced. By 2030, it hopes to reduce the cost of electricity from photovoltaic cells to around 10 cents per kWh, matching the price of electricity derived from conventional fuels, writes Killigudi Jayaraman in Nature.
The plan will be pushed forward by a mixture of other policy and regulatory measures. Those include making it mandatory for existing thermal power plants to generate at least 5% of their capacity from solar power, and for government buildings to install photovoltaic panels on rooftops. Producers connected to the grid will be able to sell their excess solar electricity to utilities; solar-power projects get a 10-year tax holiday; and other 'carrots' for the industry include the duty-free import of raw materials and priority bank loans.
Home » Environmental Health
India's Solar Mission Projects 20 GW Of Power By 2020
Sunday, August 09, 2009 at 12:04:55 PM
Environmental Health
Font Size
Bookmark and Share
An autonomous solar-energy authority will be created to execute the mission, but the existing solar-energy centre near New Delhi will be upgraded into an 'apex research institute' to coordinate solar-research centres across the country and promote foreign collaboration. The mission document recommends introducing solar-energy courses to the Indian Institutes of Technology, and creating a fellowship programme to train 100 Indian scientists a year in world-class institutions.
As for the costs of solar power, "technology is rapidly changing worldwide and costs will come down once photovoltaic panels are mass produced," says K. S. Narayanan, who works on polymer solar cells at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research at Bangalore. "We see incremental growth in efficiency of our solar cells in our lab, and globally the scene is changing faster," he adds.
"The solar mission is a win-win proposition as it promises to bring down air pollution, cut down oil bills, and contribute to a greener world," asserts Jayaraman Srinivasan, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.
But some are skeptical abut the mission's chance of success. "Going from 5 MW to 20 GW in 11 years looks like science fiction," mocks Manu Sharma, at the Centre for Social Markets, a non-governmental organization based in New Delhi.
Sharma, a campaign coordinator for the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen, points out that India's ten solar-panel manufacturers together have just 80 MW of solar-panel production capacity.
One can get an idea of the vaulting ambition of the Indian planners when one realizes that at the moment the total output of power across all mediums, coal, gas and nuclear plants, amounts to only 150 GW.