India plans to install 100,000 MW of solar energy, photovoltaic and Concentrated Solar Power, by 2022

India is working at revising the solar power target to 100,000 MW for 2022 from the current 20,000 MW.

 

“We have reset the targets of renewable energy. The earlier target for solar energy was 20,000 MW till 2022, which we are trying to reset to 100,000 MW,” he said at an event here organised by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) University.

The country wants to attract $100 billion ($115 billion) of investment in clean energy over the next five years. Companies and lenders say that will require a shift in policy from India’s current auction-based system, which caps installations to control the scale of solar fitted and the amount of subsidy payments incurred. India led the world in competitive bidding — followed by Brazil and South Africa — which helped push down the cost of solar power by about half since 2010.

“The solar target is very ambitious,” said Bharat Bhushan Agrawal, a Bloomberg New Energy Finance analyst. “There will be transmission and other infrastructure constraints to contend with. The power market will also need reforms if the share of subsidy has to be reduced and more private participation is sought.”

 

“On the solar front, we believe there is enormous potential to take it to 100,000 MW in the next 5-7 years,” he added.

The minister said the government is working to make solar projects viable by providing grid parity, making it economically viable and ensuring that bankability and returns are reasonably assured.

“The three major challenges when I came into office were in the areas of grid parity, reducing project financing costs by seeing how interest rates can go down, and ensuring bankability”, Goyal said.

“In short, we are trying to make it self-sustaining”, he added, in order to help it realise the revised target of 100,000 MW from renewable sources.