Photovoltaic solar power installations in India cross 1 GW milestone

Solar photovoltaic installations in India have crossed the 1,000 MW or 1 gigawatt (GW) mark, data made available by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, show.

As at the end of June, India had grid interactive solar PV installed capacity of 1,030.66 MW. Most of the capacities have come in Gujarat. In addition, India has 85.21 MW of off-grid solar PV systems, counting only those that are higher than 1 kW.

Renewable Energy in India crossed another milestone in the first quarter of the current year — total grid interactive renewable energy installations crossed 25,000 MW.

During the quarter, 495 MW were added — 291.70 MW of which came from the wind sector.

This addition took the total installed capacity of renewable power plants in the country to 25,409 MW.

Target for 2012-13

The Ministry has set a target of 4,125 MW of additional green power capacity for the current financial year. This includes 2,500 MW of wind power and 800 MW of solar PV.

It is worthy of note that the targeted wind power capacity is lesser than the achievement of last year, which was 3,164 MW.

However, the wind industry expects that even 2,500 MW would be a tough target to achieve, due to two reasons — removal of two key benefits of ‘accelerated depreciation’ and ‘generation-based incentive’, and the tough operating environment in key States, especially in the windiest State in the country, viz., Tamil Nadu.

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