India to add 2.5 GW solar power in 2015

Balaram was addressing the gathering at the annual power conference of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) here on Tuesday.

 

“We are at an advanced stage of implementing this park”. Last week Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) issued final guidelines for 2,000 MW in viability gap funding (VGF).

“For the rest, tenders will be called eventually”, Balaram told reporters on the sidelines of the conference. This would help to reduce the cost solar power. This is because, people in the State do not own huge tracts of land required for setting up the units.

One MW of the new solar facility is expected to be online within two months, in time for October’s India-Africa Summit, which is expected to attract leaders from more than 50 countries.

In May, the group had projected solar generation capacity addition at 2,500 MW for this year.

This would be in addition to rooftop generation.

Under the policy, solar power generators (SPGs), installed and commissioned during the operative period (till 2020), shall become eligible for benefits and incentives for a period of 25 years from their date of commissioning. Nevertheless, the support for renewable energy is seen as a rare point of agreement between India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, and Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister of Delhi (who is a mechanical engineer). Alliant Energy said it is collaborating with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to enable the landfill site to be reused for the solar facility. Alliant says that the solar facility will “offset the facilities’ power needs and improve the environmental profile of the project”.

All this while the National Institute of Solar Energy has estimated India’s solar power potential at 749 GW. But they are already able to generate 28 GW, Khanna said. It highlights that not even one per cent of the total solar energy potential has been harvested in the country. It also resulted in Asia’s largest solar park at Charanka in Patan District and India’s first megawatt-scale canal-top solar plant at Chandrasan in Mehsana District.

Mercom’s forecast for solar installations in India for calendar year 2015 now stands at about 2,500 MW. Vedamoorthy Namasivayam, senior director of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India Private Limited, was among those present.