India is the 7th largest country in the world with a rich geography to cherish all form of renewable energy whether, it is Rajasthan areas rich with solar energy or eastern cost windy environments or vast ocean stripped area. Even the mountains & forests of Indian sub – continent are exposed to sunlight sufficiently long throughout the year to become an offgrid power generator for the households at least. But India is one of the densest countries also, and to meet the increasing power requirements it is required to increase the productivity of photovoltaic system in given space & time duration of sun, unchanged. Here we require new innovations & technologies.
Photovoltaic has become an alternate power source for our conventional power sources and met the increasing power requirements. This emerging trend has pushed the technocrats in this industry to draft new innovation in Photovoltaic, for more efficiency in terms of power generation and increased exposure area, For example, walls with built in solar modules of window installed panels. In the world of Photovoltaic engineering, an innovation can be done at Cell designing level, module manufacturing level or application level.
Mr. Vivek Chaturvedi, Chief Marketing Officer, Moser Baer Solar Ltd.
Solar program picked-up in India in 2010 with the announcement of Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission, driven primarily by On-Grid systems so far. While people are benefitting indirectly because of this new capacity, the real connect with solar, will happen through mass adoption of standalone off grid solar systems. For Ex, Moser Baer Solar has installed approx. 1.5 MW off-grid systems in Leh – Laddakh, Jammu and Kashmir area in last 24 months. Southern states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu have come out with residential roof-top solar systems policy. Another major area of solar application we are focusing on now is irrigation pumps. The biggest challenge for solar energy mass scale role out is capital cost, although in last 4 years the cost have come down by almost 70%, the capital intensity of this energy source keeps it out of reach for a large section of people, and that’s why timely disbursement of subsidies from Govt.is important. Another area which we are working on is to make solar relevant for more and more people. A large section of population today lives in multistoried apartment complexes with limited or roof space. Moser Baer Solar is working aggressively on addressing this by bringing in lighter and more efficient products.
In new innovations, we are planning for panels that can be flipped outside the windows, for that we are in process of designing lighter panels that can be hanged over the windows. For smaller roofs, we have developed systems where module installation is not permanent. The module can be placed on roof and can be folded & moved, as and when required. This improves portability and can make even tenants to have system of their own. Another we are developing is irrigation pumps, with built-in technology that can help harness 90% of sunlight, as compared to 60% of the conventional system times, that increases the irrigation time. We have developed LED based solar lanterns, innovate solar energy in combination to low power consumption devices.
Mr. Sriram Ramakrishnan – MD & CEO, Consul Neowatt Power Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
India’s solar industry is evolving from purely a government initiated and funded remote electrification projects to more widespread applications. While awareness is increasing, government support and incentives are critical for more widespread adoption.
Accelerated depreciation (AD) benefits are an incentive for investment in solar power projects and must be kept in place by the Government. Different states have also given good support to promote Solar on rooftops like Tamil Nadu and have come up with a net-metering provision and solar purchase obligations (SPOs).Implementation of Net Metering across India will further boost to the adoption of Solar.
Solar power plant’s reliability and efficiency is solely dependent upon the quality and performance of the Solar Inverter which sits in between Solar PV panels and the grid or the captive load. Innovative technologies which allow the solar inverter to extract the maximum power from solar panels despite changing weather patterns using efficient MPPT (Maximum Power Point Tracker) algorithms are now available. Further, given the continued planned and unplanned power cuts in India, there is need for Solar Hybrid systems which can work when there is no power or poor power so that solar power can be harvested even during these conditions in a safe and efficient manner.
Advanced Solar Hybrid inverters are now available from highly experienced Indian manufacturers like Consul Neowatt Power solutions where due to the use of High speed DSP technology and options to have a battery, it is now possible to eliminate downstream UPS and provide uninterrupted clean power to critical loads like computers in a customer’s premise. These Intelligent Inverters also have the capability to filter the unwanted harmonics when connected to the grid whereby overall quality of the Indian power grid can be improved with wide spread deployment of these systems. Apart from making the Inverter more versatile and efficient, PV panel performance needs to improve so that more solar power can be generated using available deployment area for panels and sun power isolation at that location.
Mr. Bhupesh Trivedi, President of Marketing at India’s Waaree Group
The Indian solar industry has just moved into the next gear – this augurs well for all the stake-holders, including energy consumers, investors, promoters entrepreneurs, vendors, employees, bankers and the government. While the installed capacity of solar utility projects in the country has reached 2,700
MW, we will see another 2,000 MW getting installed in about 9-10 months from now.
Then, there are 1,000 MW of projects announced through the AP and Telangana tenders would get coupled with the next year’s JNNSM’s batch of bidding process. The general economy has also showed improvement by the GDP clocking a quarterly growth rate of 5.7%, which was better than expected. Investors are gaining confidence in India, now that we are assured of a stable government for the next 5 years at least.
We are looking at phenomenal growth of the solar power sector in the country. We will see a lot many manufacturers and installers coming in this space, increasing competition. And, therein lays the challenge – of quality and service for a system that is expected to perform for at least 25 years. Strong standards will need to be set so that the consumers are not delivered substandard products or solutions.
We expect efficiencies of modules to get better. We expect batteries to evolve with options of higher power storage at a much lesser cost. Inverters that suit Indian conditions will also go through an evolution. Overall, we hope that the markets will mature at a much faster rate than it has been over the last decade or so.
Mr. Sharad Saxena, Chief Executive Officer, Chemtrols Solar Pvt. Ltd.
With Indian solar market growing from zero to appx 3 GW within a period of 4 years, we can see the start of alternative energy revolution in India which is gradually picking up speed.
Current trends are mainly dominated by PPA based government policies creating excitement in the air, REC & 3rd party PPAs gearing up among investors and increasing demand of solar power in certain pockets of India where EB based power is proving to be expensive than solar energy. The residential and industrial sector is expected to see a solar triumph with net–metering concept and infrastructure development. If implemented at PAN India level this should be the next big thing for solar industry thereby placing India at par with European nations. With decision made by new government on ‘anti-dumping policy’, the Indian solar market is expected to observe return of thin film modules which went into a dormant period during last few months.
Lack of R&D activities in Indian solar industry has been the primary reason behind expensive solar systems. Apart from engaging in thin film and concentrated photovoltaic, our country should take some serious R&D at PCU and transformer front which our heart of any solar system. Incremental advances are happening in cell technology which makes the total cost of PV systems lesser. However, any technological breakthrough in PV is not expected for a few years.
A sturdy and simple infrastructure for implementation of government policies is always more important than the policy itself. A handful of Indian states which have released its solar policies is not enough to support implementation of advisory guidelines of central policies. Delayed release of subsidies for off-grid projects has given rise to de-motivation amongst developers. This needs to be change as its slowing down the growth of industry and lengthening delivery periods of solar projects. On the MW scale, REC policy needs a complete overhaul in terms of both RPO enforcement and REC price. Without a proper RPO enforcement mechanism, the REC scheme will not succeed.
Conclusion
Indian Solar & photovoltaic industry is definitely on its way to be matured thanks to favorable Govt. of policies and increasing trend of domestic & industrial applications. But with challenging situations new innovations & technologies are required in Indian industry and our in-house facilities for pioneer developments customized for Indian environment.
