Solar Energy – the future of Global Energy Sector

Why should we go for Solar Energy?

India gets an average of 300 sunny days and 1500-2000 sunny hours in an year. Average incidental solar irradiation in our country is 4-7KWh/m²/Day. Theoretically; India’s total potential for Solar Power is 600 TW (3000 times of the current production)!

We need only 1% of land to construct solar power plants which altogether produce 800 GW of electricity (around four times of the current total production). At present, 3% of the total land in India is being used for Power generation of around 200 GW.  A dream Solar Power project proposed in 35,000 Km² in the Desert of Thar is enough to produce 700-1200 GW of electricity (same as the total electricity output in the entire Europe presently).

Previously Solar Power Plants were very expensive to build up.  According to a case study by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), the construction of a 3 MW solar plant in Kolar District, Karnataka in 2009 has drained out 60 crore INR from the treasury. But a 2011-built 3 MW solar power plant in Raichur, Karnataka needed only 43.5 crore INR to be completed. The analysis states that the expense of a 1 GW Solar power plant would be INR 14,500 crore in August 2011, while in 2009, it would have been INR 20,000 crore.

At the end of 2011, the construction cost for a 1 GW Solar power was reduced to 10,000 crore Indian Rupees. The expense reduction process was accelerated by the fall of the cost of essential commodities to construct solar power plants. KPMG says that the cost of solar energy will decrease upto 7% annually while the cost of conventional energy will increase upto 5.5% per year. These studies prove that solar power sector is rapidly changing into a profitable investment field. Experts say that Solar Power will reach or go beyond Grid parity of India in 2014.

India has announced an INR 1 lakh crore budget for the mission – “20 GW solar energy in 2022”. If we compare the 2 GW Koodamkulam Nuclear Plant for which 14,000 crore rupees spent with the above mentioned budget, it is very clear that the least expense to attain 20 GW capacity in Nuclear power sector is INR 1.8 lakh crore. That means, for constructing a nuclear power plant which produce the same amount of electricity as of  a 20 GW solar power plant, we must spend an additional 80,000 crore rupees! Operational and maintenance expenses will be counted separately.

Solar Energy goes internationally Green!

Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is an interesting program put forwarded by Asian Development Bank (ADB) for their associated countries. The program promotes clean energy, energy efficiency and waste utilization projects to reduce the emission of green house gases and environmental pollution. Since the Solar projects meet the criteria for CDM by the Kyoto Protocol, the plants will be eligible for gaining Carbon Credits or Certified Emission Reductions (CERs). For that, the projects should be registered under the CDM Executive Board (EB) through an official process. Obtaining carbon credits will increase the revenue and attracts more International investments in Solar Power Sector (As of now, the transaction rate of a single carbon credit is 22 dollars.), and so that we can enhance these other renewable energy sectors using the fund we obtained by the trading of carbon credits.

Ever since the “Go green” international eco – conservation policy became popular, solar energy projects are attracting large scale financial investments globally. International finance corporation (IFC) of World Bank has risen the funding in India from INR 73 crore in 2010 to INR 335 crore in 2011. According to Bloomberg New Energy Foundation, India has received a total global investment of INR 22,000 crore. On addition, KPMG observes that the steady decline in the construction cost of solar projects will make an additional profit of up to INR 42,000 crore. All these statistical inferences are pointing at the bright future of solar systems in India.

The only drawback for India in this particular renewable energy sector is the lack of research. While the western countries are far in front of solar energy researches, there is not much research is going on in India. To go green and economically safe, we must focus on the organic solar cell researches, especially bio – solar cells, as the popular western countries do.

20^th century has seen a big leap in science sector which made the life so easier for humans. But a majority of those scientific inventions were not ecologically concerned and they altered the global eco system dramatically. Now the scenario is clear, we know that we should conserve the nature for our own existence. This is the right time, if not so late, to dispose harmful scientific interventions and to think about the constructive development which do not disturb the mighty nature, especially when we are supplied with huge inventories from nature itself.