India Solar, Wind, Biomass, Biofuels – EAI

India Solar Energy Submit

Latest News for Energy Efficiency, Solar, Wind, Biomass Power, Biofuels, Waste to Energy

Mr. Narsi Santhanam, Director – EAI, chairs the event "India Solar Energy Summit"

Mr. Narasimhan Santhanam, Director of EAI, was the chairperson for the event. The summit, organized by Lnoppen,   featured sessions focused on policy, financing, technology and opportunities for small and medium businesses.

The audience comprised mainly

  • Indian companies keen on entering the solar industry
  • Quite a few companies from Europe who were system integrators, solar power plant developers or supplying equipments and machinery to solar industry
  • Media

Some of the speakers of the event included

  1. Dr. Pramod Deo, Chairperson of the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission(CERC)
  2. Dr. Christodas Gandhi, Chairman and MD of Tamil Nadu Energy Development Agency (TEDA)
  3. G.M. Pillai,Director General of  World Institute of Sustainable Energy (WISE)
  4. Mr. Andreas Thermann, Senior Project Manager of KfW India.
  5. Mr. Elias Issa, CEO of RGE energy
  6. Mr. Nitin Shankar of Synova SA
  7. Mr. Lokesh Jain of Mott MacDonald
  8. Mr. Ashok Prakash of Optimal Power Solutions
  9. Mr. Amit Barve, GM of Schott Solar AG
  10. Mr. MP Singh, Joint director-Projects of Punjab Energy Development Authority (PEDA)
  11. Dr. Swati Purakayastha of Optimal Power Solutions
  12. Mr. Sushil Kumar Paliwal from Moser Baer

Mr. Santhanam made a presentation on the topic “ Opportunities for Small and Medium Enterprises along the Solar PV and Solar CSP Value Chain".

The presentation titled “Levi Strauss or Also Rans?  Diverse Opportunities in Solar PV and CSP”  is available below.

According to Mr. Santhanam, the key takeaways from the event are

    1. India has a much higher potential for solar (in terms of energy density) than countries such as Germany; yet, we have very little power derived from solar today, especially when compared to those countries.
    2. The key reason for Germany’s success has been its pioneering implementation of feed-in-tariffs many years back. In Germany, banks are looking favourably at homes with solar panels while giving loans as the banks feel that solar panels provide electricity for the long term to the house at a more stable rate than fossil based grid power, which could increase significantly.
    3. For India to meet a 15% green power generation target by 2020, we will need a lot of capacity additions in renewable – about 48000 MW in wind, 33000 MW in solar, 5 MW in biomass power and about 3.5 MW in small hydro. This is a lot more than what the government has proposed, at least for wind and solar.
    4. In solar, the targets under JNNSM need to be possibly reworked if India is to achieve 15% power from renewables by 2020.
    5. India has the potential to become a manufacturing hub for solar
    6. CERC has indeed been quite lenient in the context of renewable energy by waiving off transmission charges and charges for losses; also many SERCs  taking RPOs (and sometimes even solar purchase obligations) quite seriously.
    7. Are the projects awarded under the first phase of JNNSM (the 5 MW solar PV projects, done under reverse bidding) really viable? Many of the people in the industry do not think they are viable because of the huge discounts these project developers quoted to win the bids.
    8. State policies are long on rhetoric and short on details. For instance, the Rajasthan state renewable energy policy reportedly talks about a lofty goal of 10,000 MW, but when the details are analyzed, less than 400 MW are accounted for! In addition, Rajasthan state renewable energy policy prohibits interstate sale of solar-based power, which does not make sense because Rajasthan’s total solar potential is so high that the state possibly cannot absorb all the power generated should targets be reached
    9. Rather than trying to promote 100 companies putting up 5 or 10 MW each of solar power plants, India  should try to get tens of thousands of small installations each 10-25 kW.
    10. While costs of solar panels are coming down significantly, the costs of balance of systems are not coming down; as BoS cost about 40% of total installed cost of solar PV power plants, it is important that something is done to bring down the cost of BoS as well
    11. Outside of decrease in the costs of panels and balance of systems, what are the other ways by which costs could be decreased? One important way is by decreasing the cost of financing (debt)
    12. IEC standards for module testing are quite rudimentary in nature and IEC certification alone does not prove the quality of modules
    13. Most of the methodologies used in and data used for forecasting for solar, wind etc., are arbitrary.
    14. Countries such as Turkey are not very proactive when it comes to solar. That country, for instance, provides 7 US cents for wind, but is willing to give only 15 US cents for solar PV (feed in tariffs) while the requirement is much higher
    15. While PV is likely to grow fastest in the short run, in the medium and long run, CSP could grow much faster

A more detailed blog report on the conference is available at www.solarnovus.com. The links to the blogs by Mr. Nilesh Jadhav is given below.

Day 1 – http://bit.ly/hJruP3

Day 2 - http://bit.ly/dLqmxw