I must apologise at the very start for writing about the event after two weeks of its completion. Albeit delayed, I hope it is interesting for you to read what transpired.

At EAI, we had come up with the EAI Club Meets with the objective that, over a period of time, such meets held countrywide could act as an important, if small, catalyst for the renewable energy and sustainability movements in India.

While that was the broad idea, to be honest, I really had little clue what would transpire at the first such meet. We however did have an agenda:

1. Each attendee provides a detailed introduction
2. Brainstorm on what we should be doing in such meets in future.

Right at the beginning of the meet, I must say I felt really positive. For one, ALL the members who had envinced an interest in attending it actually attended it – and that too, on a Sunday morning. That alone represented an enormous amount of passion.

The next two hours produced some really useful exchanges of information and intelligence, further strengthening my optimism about the need for such meets.

The group of people who attended it belonged to four distinct categories:
1. Solar Power Developers or Technology Providers
2. Project Management Companies / EPCs
3. Finance and Investment
4. College Students and Enthusiasts

At the end of the first hour, the entire group had a good idea of who is good in what. The next one hour, we had a lively exchange of who could be useful to whom. This was really interesting, in which we saw members being immediately able to identify one or more members in the group with whom they could start doing something together. For instance, many of the members were interested in interacting further with the project management company because these were folks who were actually implementing renewable energy projects on the ground. The other person who many found interesting was a chartered accountant who was keen on assisting renewable energy companies in their funding requirements.

The last 15 minutes, we brainstormed on how we should go about conducting the subsequent meets – what should be the agenda and what should be the frequency of such meets. It was broadly decided that we should have the EAI meets once a fortnight; the agenda for further meets was not finalized, though there were some suggestions. I am hoping to get something concretised for the agenda by this weekend.

I am hoping to have the next EAI Meet on 8 Aug, and I am hoping from that time onwards, we will be having a meet every fortnight.

The idea is to have such meets organized all over India. At EAI, we wish to try it out for Chennai and based on results, finetune the process and content so that we can figure out how to roll it for other Indian cities.

For those of you who have any suggestions for the EAI meets, please drop in a note. And oh yes, if you are from Chennai and had not attended the first meet, please send me a note if you are interested in attending the meet on Aug 8 (my email at the end).

Thank you very much for your time

Narasimhan Santhanam
EAI – Energy Alternatives India @ www.eai.in
Mob: +91-98413-48117
narsi@clixoo.com

EAI is a media partner for the event, and I am hoping that this event is able to generate a fair bit of enthusiasm in Chennai on green energy trends.

Green Energy World Expo & Conference 2010 is now accepting abstract submittals for the OCTOBER 2010 conference program. Last data to submit the abstracts is 7 Aug 2010.

Take advantage of the opportunity to share your insight with the renewable energy industry. Two action-packed days designed to provide you with the latest investment opportunities, business insights, career options, and fund-raising strategies, from seed to Stimulus.

Those who are interested in knowing more on submitting your abstracts by August 7, 2010 and

Abstracts can be submitted on the topics that include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Solar
• Wind
• Bio-fuel
• Geothermal
• Hydropower
• Environment focused:
• Waste Management
• Water management
• Air pollution treatment & recycling
• Energy efficiency
• Smart grids

And if you are a provider of green products or services, you have enough reasons to participate in the seminar and/or conference:

• Explore business opportunities with corporate, government and institutional entities
• Meet with decision makers, suppliers and innovators
• Position your company within the key market players in your industry
• Profile your products, services and technologies and meet regional and global partners
• Host exclusive networking events
• Reach attendees in the environment sector
• Align your brand to a high profile regional and international event marketing campaign
• Benefit from global media and online coverage

Those of you interested in participating or in submitting abstracts, kindly get in touch with: Pooja NM, Mob: 9619913130; email: poojanm.m@gmail.com

More on the event from here – http://gewexpo2010.blogspot.com/

The Ministry (MNRE) has set a target of installing 200 MWp for off-grid and decentralized solar systems upto March 2013 under the first Phase of Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM). The Ministry has issued detailed guidelines to facilitate the implementation of the Scheme and is providing Central financial assistance in the form of capital subsidy and interest subsidy to individuals, non-commercial entities for the offgrid solar photovoltaic lighting and other similar systems.

The Ministry is in final stages of discussion with NABARD and other Banks to structure a refinance/interest subvention agreement to facilitate promotion of offgrid systems. This arrangement will enable manufacturers and system integrators to reach out to a large rural client base seamlessly. While initially these systems would largely be for lighting and for meeting other small electrical needs, it is expected that as the relationship between banks, clients and manufacturers builds, the manufacturers would innovate with other product applications as per demand of the market and the paying capacity. This , is one of the objectives of the Ministry and would lead to product
innovation and with a strong system of accountability for quality and O&M.

Expression of Interest is invited from the interested manufacturers of SPV lighting systems having a minimum manufacturing, supplying and installing experience of 5 years in SPV lighting systems to offer their range of products for extending loans by NABARD and other Regional Rural Banks to individuals and non-commercial organisations in the enclosed format. These may be sent to the Ministry at the following e-mail id tarun.singh@nic.in by the 30th July 2010.

After short listing the applicants, the Ministry would facilitate a discussion between the manufacturers and NABARD officials and enable structuring of a appropriate banking format which will facilitate a roll out of this scheme.

Source: MNRE

You can have a look at the list here . Please note that this is not a shortlist; it is only a list of applicants…

The much awaited guidelines for the larger solar PV power plants were announced yesterday.

Dr. Farooq Abdullah, Union Minister for New and Renewable Energy and Shri SushilKumar Shinde , Union Minister for Power on 25 Jul 2010 jointly unveiled the guidelines for selection of new solar power projects under the 1000 MW solar power scheme in the first phase of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission. This would put India in league with countries like Germany, Spain and Japan who are leaders in harnessing solar power.

Speaking on the occasion , Dr. Farooq Abdullah said that he is committed to adding 1100 MW of grid connected solar power by the end of the first phase of the Mission and this will only be possible if all activities are carried out with clockwork precision.

The Minister informed the gathering that a tremendous excitement both domestically and internationally about our National Solar Mission was evident from the fact that the small grid connected plants scheme that was recently launched attracted nearly 400 MW worth of applications- nearly 4 times the available capacity. He said that he has asked IREDA to ensure that it should announce the list of eligible projects selected under the scheme latest by August 15, 2010.

Dr. Abdullah anticipated a similarly large response in the large grid-connected power plants as well and expressed hope that NVVN will now take immediate steps to bring out the expression of interest, invite applications and select eligible developers under the policy released today.

The new and Renewable Energy Minister also acknowledged the effort put in by both the Secretaries and their team of officers, scientists and experts involved in the process for operationalising the Mission in record time.

Speaking on the occasion, Shri Shinde said that the guidelines have been finalised after considerable deliberations in true spirit for the success of the National Solar Mission. He said that the NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam Limited (NVVN), a wholly owned subsidiary of NTPC, is the nodal agency for entering into PPA with Solar Power Developers and will  shortly be inviting project developers to participate in the Request for Selection (RFS) for development of Solar Projects under this scheme.

Shri Bharatsinh Solanki said that  to achieve the target of 20,000 MW of solar energy by 2022 we need to put in concerted efforts and the indigenous manufacturing of solar power equipment will be of paramount importance in achieving this goal.

Shri B.K. Chaturvedi, in his address, termed the occasion a reflection of synergy between the two Ministries to take India ahead in achieving target set under the Mission. He also assured all support from Planning Commission.

Under the Jawaharlal Nehru Mational Solar Mission, NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam (NVVN), which is the power trading arm of the NTPC has been designated as the nodal agency  to purchase solar power generated by independent solar power producers, at rates fixed by the Central  Electricity Regulatory Commission(CERC) and for a period of 25 years. For 2010 -11 the CERC has fixed the rate of Rs. 17.91 per Unit for PV and Rs 15.31 per unit for solar thermal power projects. The rates will be applicable for Solar PV projects commissioned by March 2012 and Solar Thermal projects commissioned by March 2013. Government will provide equivalent MW of power from the unallocated quota of NTPC for bundling with solar power. NVVN will select projects to set up about 1000MW capacity of solar power plants based on solar thermal and photovoltaic technologies. The utilities will be able to account for purchase of solar power against their RPO obligations.

Today NVVN also signed MoU with 16 Project developers to set up to 84 MW capacity solar power projects. Under Migration 54 MW capacity will be through solar PV and balance 30 MW through solar thermal technology. These projects are expected to be commissioned by middle of next year.

Earlier this year, on 16th of June , 2010, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy had announced the guidelines for providing support for off gid solar applications and also small grid connected solar power plants of 100kW to 2 MW capacities.

The Ministry has now released the guidelines concerning all the three major deployment programmes under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission to fully operationalise the deployment related activities.

It was thus interesting for me to read a nice article that gave data on the market size for solar water heaters in India (see this link for article): “the Rs.600 crore domestic water heater segment largely consists of electric (Rs.450 crore), solar (Rs.120 crore) and gas (Rs.30 crore) heaters.”

Now, 120 crores is not really a lot, and even 600 crores does not sound like heck of a lot, for a population of 120 crores – that’s just Rs 5 per year per person.

India has about 200 million households…with about40 million middle class households of that. In 2009-10, it was estimated that about 10 million households had annual incomes in excess of Rs 5 lakhs.

On the other hand, the total number of households with a solar water heater is only about 0.7 million – less than 2%of the total middle class households. Compare this with China – 25 million households there have a solar water heater.

Once again, these statistics to me only mean that the potential in this segment in quite massive. This interesting paper estimates that the solar water heater segment will grow an impressive 500-600% between now and 2022 – I wouldn’t be surprised if this came true.

Useful links:

Ariston Thermo – a world leader in solar water heaters; in India, it is called Racold Thermo, based in Pune

Inderpeet Wadhwa became the first entrepreneur to supply electricity to a Village in north India, 40 km from Amritsar. On December 1st 2009, his first phase (1MW) of 2 MW solar PV plant went online to become the country’s first commercial MW scale solar power supplier.

For each unit of electricity pumped into the grid, his company, a lifeline for 20 villages, gets Rs 15 from the Punjab State Electricity Board, of which Rs 6 is borne by the MNRE. He says the average cost of generation, or levelized tariff, works out to Rs 9 per unit for the power purchase agreement (PPA) period of 30 years.

Background

In 2007, he started on his vision to set up India’s first private solar power plant. Total investment was 40 crores and Azure Power received initial venture capital funding from Helion Ventures (an India-focused venture fund) and Foundation Capital (a global investment fund which focuses on start-ups).

Azure started building in May 2009 and took less than 6 months to start generating 1 megawatt of power.

Problems Faced and Lessons Learned

“Had the quality been better and cost of modules manufactured in India been lower, we would have considered buying the solar PV modules from India itself,” rues Wadhwa.

When he set out to acquire land amid the region’s wheat and rice fields, he quickly ran into a thicket of bureaucratic problems. Getting money to build India’s largest private solar-power plant was easy compared with getting the required 152 signatures from local bureaucrats in the state of Punjab, says Wadhwa. He had to negotiate terms of a 32-year lease with various village and district officials, then with several more officials in the state’s rural land ministry. It took months and, “the price kept going up at every level,” Mr. Wadhwa said. He also needed sign-offs from the state pollution board and even the railways ministry, which had to approve his request to run a power cable under the local tracks. When the project stalled in various government offices, shadowy brokers offered to help speed up the process for a fee, but Mr. Wadhwa says he refused to pay.

Making a profit on the project could prove even tougher. A total investment of Rs. 19 crores has gone into commissioning the 1 MW output.

After all the installation costs — including importing Chinese-made solar panels and American-made cables — Azure needs much more than the 19 cents per unit of power that the Punjab state utility has pledged to pay.

Besides, the Punjab government is offering a peak rate (peak hours are billed at higher rates) for sale of power from solar projects at Rs 8.93 per kWh (kilowatt-hour) from 2011-12, higher than the Rs 3 to 4 per kWh it pays for conventional energy.

This doesn’t quite cover costs (Rs 12-20 per kWh) but because the power purchase agreement with Punjab is valid for 25 years, Wadhwa reckons he’ll make money at some point since the costs of solar power generation are expected to decline at 7 to 9 per cent per year by 2020. Hence, Azure Power gets the benefit of reduced costs over time and it also does not have to look out for buyers during this period.

Future Plan

He is scaling up the plant’s capacity to 2 MW to feed more villages. He has planned similar projects totaling 24 MW in Gujarat, Punjab, Karnataka and Haryana.

By September 2010, Wadhwa plans to set up another plant in Punjab to take the capacity to 4 MW. He also plans to set up an 8 MW plant in Gujarat by the end of financial year 2009-10. To finance these plants, he has two more investors lined up. One is the International Finance Corporation, the commercial lending arm of the World Bank, which is planning to make a quasi-equity investment of $10 million (around Rs 46 crores — Rs 460 million) in upcoming solar power projects in Punjab and Gujarat.

“The debt to equity ratio is 2:1, so we expect to raise a total of around Rs 150 crores (Rs 1.50 billion) in the form of stake sale and bonds,” says Wadhwa. He, however, declines to divulge the name of the other investor.

And how does he plan to raise the rest of the money? “Ongoing costs for these plants are minimal. Every proposed plant will generate money that can be ploughed back. Besides, we can always go for an initial public offering (IPO),” says Wadhwa.

Read more on EAI’s India Solar PV report

To remind unacquainted readers, Monocrystalline photovoltaic cells are made from a single large crystal, cut from ingots. These are the most efficient convertors of sunlight, but are hence also the most expensive. These cells are somewhat better in low light conditions, but that efficiency advantage is not as significant as commonly thought.

Polycrystalline cells are basically cast blocks of silicon which contain many small crystals. This is the most common type of PV cell right now, although thin-film solar cells are fast replacing them in popularity. These are slightly less efficient compared to Monocrystalline photovoltaic cells, but once set into a frame with several cells, the actual difference in watts per square foot is not all that high.

Despite their high costs, Monocrystalline PV solar energy panels have been the first choice for many years, and are among the oldest, most efficient, and most dependable technologies. Each module is made from a single silicon crystal, and is more efficient per sq. meter of land area, though more expensive than the newer and cheaper polycrystalline modules.

Monocrystalline photovoltaic cells are generally considered the workhorses of the solar power market, and most people will choose them due to their ready availability. These panels are easily identifiable, made of uniformly stacked rounded cells.
Because they’re made of just one crystal, not multiple crystals fused together, the process of manufacturing them is one of the most complex and costly processes. That means every panel will cost more than in the case of polycrstalline PV cells.

However, increased cost buys additional efficiency, and one panel will produce more power than lower priced options.

If space is a concern (which it often is with solar panels), monocrystalline is the best type to use; more wattage per square foot can be delivered with these panels. The average 175 watt Monocrystalline photovoltaic panel is only about 63 inches in length, 31 inches in width, a little over an inch high, and weighs thirty-three pounds, with an aluminum frame. The lifespan of a monocrystalline cell is a minimum of twenty-five years and can be more than fifty, making them a worthwhile investment for long term use.

However, monocrystalline photovoltaic panels are extremely fragile. That means a rigid mounting is a must.

Moreover, like polycrystalline  solar panels, monocrystalline solar modules suffer a reduction in output once the temperature from the sunlight reaches around fifty degrees Celsius/a hundred and fifteen degrees Fahrenheit. Reductions of output of around 12-15 percent can be expected. These are lower than the reductions in output experienced by polycrystalline cells, but they still need to be factored into the calculations and design for any solar power system. For harnessing power in such harsh temperature conditions, thin-film cells are the best bet, and are gaining popularity in regions like India.

However, in temperate urban areas, for those putting together a long term solar setup who want to know they have access to the best and most reliable panels in the market, monocrystalline types are probably the best bet. Their longevity, performance, and efficiency mean that they’re a good buy over a longer period of time, and cost benefit can offset the higher price .

The power plant situated in the village of Awan, Punjab, is fully built, owned and operated by Azure Power.

For the plant, 270W polycrystalline modules were imported from the US and China. These modules were manufactured from polycrystalline-cast silicon blocks coated with an anti-reflective substance which increases the conversion efficiency even at low radiance levels.

Each module measures 156mm×156mm, weighs 25kg and has a cable measuring 1,100mm. They have a unique design with drainage holes that prevent the module breaking in harsh weather.

The 2MW Awan plant has an anticipated working life of over 40 years. The Awan plant is directly connected to the local grid through an 11kV transmission line, which avoids loss of power during transmission and distribution.

Built under a 30-year power purchase agreement with the Punjab State Electricity Board, the Rs. 400 million ($8.6 million) plant will power 4,000 rural homes or 20,000 people. The solar PV field will provide electricity to approximately 42 villages around Awan, under a 30-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with the Punjab State Electricity Board. This PPA entails Azure to sell the entire power it produces at its Punjab plant to the state-run utility for 15 rupees per unit for the first 10 years and 8.93 rupees for the next 20 years.

The solar plant is facilitated by the Punjab Energy Development Agency and the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy.

In addition to Punjab, Azure Power has already inked agreements with the governments of Gujarat and Harayana to build facilities that can produce a total of 22 MW. They are also coordinating with the state governments of Karnataka, West Bengal, Maharashtra and Rajasthan for another 30 MW.

Azure Power aims to build 100 MW worth of solar-based power plants in the next three years, with a total capex of about Rs 1,500 crores. The firm had raised $10 million from the World Bank’s International Finance Corp in March, and it eventually expects to float an initial public offering.

Funded by venture capitalists Helion Venture Partners and Foundation Capital, Azure Power may opt for further fund raising in the medium term, Inderpreet Wadhwa, the CEO said. “I think we are very well capitalised at this point, but I can certainly expect another round of funding in may be 18-20 months. There is a enough potential and there is enough demand and there is enough investment available out there to get to the numbers that India is talking about.”

Wadhwa spoke of his experience with reducing capex costs: “The first project we actually did was about Rs 19 crore per MW, the second project we are doing is about Rs 17 crore per MW, and we expect that prices would continue to decline, to about Rs 15 crore per MW over couple of years,” he said.

Azure is also setting up a 15 MW power plant in the state of Gujarat by November 2011.

The 15 MW Gujarat project, in partnership with US-based SunEdison, has a 25-year contract with Gujarat state-run utility to offload its power at Rs 15 per unit for 12 years and Rs 5 per unit for the remaining period, Wadhwa added.