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Solar power in India

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India receives about 300 clear sunny days in a year. India's theoretical solar potential is about 5 EWh/year (i.e. = 5000 trillion kWh/yr ~ 600 TW), far more than its current total consumption. Even assuming 10% conversion efficiency for PV modules, it will still be thousand times greater than the likely electricity demand for India by the year 2015. [1] [2]

With a major section of its citizens still surviving off-grid, India's grid system is considerably under-developed. Cheap solar technology, when available, is considered as a potential alternative that can bring distributed electricity to people, and bypass, or atleast relieve the need of installing connections to a centralised grid. Another e.g. is the cost of energy expended on temperature control - a factor squarely influencing regional energy intensity. Cooling from intense solar radiation could make energy-economic sense in the subcontinent, more so, since cooling load requirements are roughly in phase with the sun's intensity. [3] [4] [5]

However, currently solar power is prohibitive due to high initial costs of deployment. A thriving market can only spawn when the technology becomes competitively cheaper, i.e. attaining cost parity with fossil or nuclear energy. At the present India is heavily dependent on foreign oil - a phenomenon likely to continue until non-fossil / renewable energy technology becomes economically viable in the country. [6]

Being a densely populated region in the sunny tropical belt, India's very long-term solar potential could be unparalleled in the world - the subcontinent has the ideal combination of both high solar insolation [7] and a big potential consumer base density.[8][9][10]

PV manufacture in India

includes

  • BP-Tata joint venture
  • Moser-Baer signed up for a thin film Si plant provided by Applied Materials

See also

References