Given India’s large geographical spread and ready availability of sunshine, solar energy could be the answer to our energy shortage.
The average intensity of solar radiation received on India is 200 Mw per sq km. With a geographical area of 3.287 million sq km, this amounts to 657.4 million Mw. However, leaving aside land being used for agriculture, forests, housing and industry etc, only 12.5 per cent of the land area (amounting to 0.413 million sq km) can, in theory, be used for solar energy installations. Even if 10 per cent of this area is used, the available solar energy would be about 8 million Mw, which is equivalent to 5909 mtoe (million tonnes of oil-equivalent) per year. TERI estimates show that the country’s total commercial energy consumption could increase from 284 mtoe in 2001 to 1,727 mtoe in 2031 in a ‘business-as-usual’ (BAU) scenario. In that scenario, the available solar energy would be more than three times the estimated commercial energy consumption in 2031.
Energy is an essential element that drives the country’s growth engine, besides being a key ingredient of socio-economic development, including poverty alleviation, improved living standards and increased economic output. A definite correlation has also been established between access to energy on the one hand and educational attainment and literacy on the other. To meet its ever increasing energy demand, India is heavily dependent on imported fuels. It has been estimated that in a BAU scenario, the import dependency would increase to 72 per cent and 88 per cent for coal and oil respectively by 2031. Moreover, CO2 emissions from the energy sector are projected to increase from 0.9 billion tonnes in 2001 to 5.8 billion tonnes in 2031. As far as electricity supply is concerned, in 2008-09 India had an 11 per cent energy deficit and a 12 per cent peak deficit. There are about 400 million people without access to electricity. India’s per capita electricity consumption is around 730 kWh per annum, against the world average of 2,596 kWh. On the other hand, traditional biomass is the primary source of cooking energy for over 80 per cent of rural households.
The indigenously available solar energy resource has to be seen against this backdrop, and it can be used gainfully to address India’s energy security and energy independence concerns - both at the national level as well as at the village level. Solar energy assumes special significance in India when viewed in the context of the geographic diversity and size of the country, not to mention the size of its rural economy.
On the applications side, the range of solar thermal energy is very large. At the high end there are megawatt-level solar thermal power plants whereas at the lower end there are domestic appliances such as solar cookers, solar water heaters and PV lanterns. In between one can have applications such as industrial process heat, desalination, refrigeration and air-conditioning, drying, large-scale cooking, water pumping, domestic power systems, and passive solar architecture. Accelerating the utilisation of solar energy — for heating, cooling, lighting, and power generation applications — is important not only from the point of view of energy security, but also from the points of view of climate change mitigation and universal access to energy, especially in rural areas.
While the rationale for greater utilisation of solar energy in the country is obvious, there are certain challenges inhibiting the faster uptake of solar technologies. The foremost of them pertains to the costs of the solar systems. While this is true for some technologies like those for solar power generation, in case of others the costs of the solar systems are quite competitive, especially if one also takes into account the operational expenses. For instance, in most of the applications, the payback period for solar water heating and process heating systems is found to be around three years. And on a life-cycle basis these are the most cost-effective compared to conventional systems. Secondly, the price of conventional energy does not reflect its true cost, such as that of the environmental impact.
As far as solar power generation technologies are concerned, economies of scale coupled with greater localisation in terms of materials and manufacturing could help bring about the desired competitiveness vis-à-vis the conventional options in a few years. But that necessitates much higher deployment of solar systems, along with the availability of long-term low-cost finance in case of large projects and access to easy consumer finance in case of individual systems. Indeed, the ambitious targets of the National Solar Mission are meant to provide such an impetus to solar energy. One challenge that large solar power plants might face pertains to the competitive demand for large tracts of land (arid and waste land) by solar as well as large-scale bio-fuel plantations.
However, we would have to simultaneously pursue aggressively indigenous and collaborative R&D for not only bringing down costs but also, more importantly, making solar devices much more robust and user-friendly. This would effectively address the other challenge, namely, that of reliability and convenience of solar systems. Moreover, the promotion of Solar Energy Service Companies on the lines of ESCOs could also help in tackling this aspect through better services along the complete value chain.
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Making people aware that such options do exist is another challenge. Here, a well-designed media campaign could go a long way. The energy efficiency campaigns of the Bureau of Energy Efficiency are good examples of this. However, greater awareness among potential users could prove to be counter-productive if enough avenues are not there to respond to their queries as well as to supply the systems that are required. Thus, there is an urgent need to cultivate and strengthen the delivery network and channel partnerships. Also, we need to leverage the expertise that India has developed in the field over the years so that not only are domestic demands met but India also establishes itself as a ‘solar hub’ for manufacturing solar systems, devices, and their components. This in turn would also help scale up the activities to levels that are economical.
The author is Director and Senior Fellow, Energy-Environment Technology Development Division, TERI