Solar PV in India Industry Status & Trends
Energy is by far the largest industry in the world. It is worth about $7 trillion per year, while the worlds total GDP is about $55 trillion. Thus, the energy industry is worth more than 10% of the entire worlds economy.
For the last 100 years, this industry has been ruled by fossil fuels. Our electricity comes predominantly from coal and natural gas, and our transportation fuel comes from gasoline and diesel all of them are remnants of fossil deposits. The traditionally exploited fossil fuels are however fast depleting. This implies that over the next 50-75 years, a large part of the energy economy will be replaced by alternative fuels.
One may
visualize the size of the transformation that is coming a
transformation that is likely to affect more than 10% of the entire
global economy. This is the size of the opportunity that the alternative
energy industry promises. The alternative energy revolution has started
and is gradually picking up speed. So a massive transformation is going
to take time to get completed a few decades at the least in the
short and medium term, there will be a number of attractive
opportunities for entrepreneurs.
Solar Photovoltaic in India A Snapshot
Total available potential | India lies in a sunny tropical belt (High insolation) Total theoretical potential annually over 5000 trillion kWh | |
Exploited potential (production/installed capacity) | Exploited potential (production/installed capacity) is very little; total installed capacity (grid and off grid) is approximately only 110 MW, and of that only about 17.82 MW (as of Dec 2010) is grid-connected (as of Jan 2011) | |
Future expected production/installed capacity | For solar CSP and PV together, National Solar Mission attempts to reach an installed capacity of
Moreover, large areas of the Thar Desert has been set aside for solar power projects, sufficient to generate 700 to 2100 GW | |
Specific government incentives | National Solar Mission and other Generation Based Incentives (GBI) are available through Ministry of New and Renewable Energy | |
Amount of investments happening in this now, expected in future | Government is expected to spend $19 billion until 2022. | |
Key bottlenecks and barriers |
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Cost of power generation - and trends in the same over years | Current cost of production (after bidding) Rs 12/kWh. This includes O&M, amortized/depreciated capital costs, loan repayment costs, and other expenses such as insurance. Costs of production expected of Solar PV power plants in the near future - Rs/kWh: By 2012 12 By 2015 9 By 2020 6 |