NEW DELHI ? There are few places in the world where the opportunity for solar power is more blindingly obvious than India. There are also few industries where the possibility of collaboration between India and the United States is more tantalizing.
But while India?s solar industry is finally taking off, massive hurdles must be overcome before it can make a meaningful contribution to the country?s rapidly growing power needs, experts and business leaders say.
Two years ago, as part of its National Action Plan on Climate Change, India set out to boost the solar industry through subsidies, setting a generation target equivalent to around 3 percent of the country?s projected power needs by 2022.
The private sector has responded eagerly. With the price of solar energy dropping sharply, and with sun-drenched western states such as Gujarat and Rajasthan launching their own drives to subsidize solar power, many say the target will be more than met.
?India is a very important market for the solar industry, one of the top three markets worldwide,? said Jayesh Goyal of California-based concentrated solar power technology provider Areva Solar. ?The general view is that India will reach the 3 percent target before 2022.?
The logic for the Indian solar sector appears almost irrefutable.
India enjoys more than 300 days of sun a year and is desperately short of electricity to power its fast-growing economy. Power cuts are frequent, and reliance on noisy, expensive and polluting diesel-generators is widespread; some 400 million Indians are not even connected to the grid.
Just last month, Gujarat opened Asia?s largest solar park in a stretch of desert near Pakistan, promising to outstrip its nearest rival in Golmud in western China. Plans were also announced to open another large solar plant in neighboring Rajasthan, with a collaboration between India?s Reliance Power and Areva Solar.
But Rajendra Pachauri, who headed the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said India has so far taken only a small step in a much longer journey toward renewable energy.
?It can be a game changer, but you need a lot of enabling policies and private-sector investors who are prepared to take a few risks,? he said. ?You need an extremely forward-looking R & D policy and infrastructure, and I am not so sure that is in play yet.?
?Consolidation will happen?
India lacks the technological expertise and access to cheap capital the solar industry relies on. That is where companies such as Azure Power come in.
The independent Indian power producer is looking to tap into American technology and capital to satisfy the growing demand here. The U.S. government?s Export-Import Bank is among its main financiers.
?We are creating manufacturing jobs in the U.S. and service and installation jobs in India,? Azure?s chief executive, Inderpreet Wadhwa, said.
In the past two years, the price of solar power has fallen dramatically, thanks to a glut of solar panels in the market and falling silicon prices. Where the Indian government was initially prepared to pay up to 17 rupees per kilowatt hour (kWh) for solar energy, companies are now bidding for contracts to supply solar power for less than half that price.
Source: http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=07fc4149cc35d25e024e0b48d4d517d3
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