Well that is why i did mentioned number of alternate sources like Hydel, Wind, Coal, the Solar also oil and gas!
The comment i make about solar is that these are maintenance intensive. For a 1000 MW plant you need THOUSANDS of acre of land, area that you needs guarding and protection and an area that will need MULTIPLE posts and offices to maintain and control/patrol. MILLIONS of solar panels (yes, MILLIONS), which is a heavy capital investment but more importantly will have continuous running costs in terms of maintenance and operations. Thousands will be required as a cleaning crew alone if the efficiency of the panels is to be maintained. Overall, it will be an administrative challenge to manage a single site spread across some 6-7 thousand acre land (note that every square meter of this land have a panel and therefore is a functioning part of the site). All this for a plant that will give you electricity only in the day time and that too mainly in the summers. Take out the overcast days and you will note why i do not see Solar Energy as the most preferable option. There is thousands of MW potential in Hydel and Wind. While wind may not be giving output 24/7 note that 400-500 mills are required to produce similar 1000 MW energy. You can easily calculate the area they will cover and the crew it will need to operate and maintain. Hydel is a different league altogether. For an agriculture based country like ours, i think the best way to describe Hydel power plants from our perspective is that electricity will be a byproduct. Water is what we will be and need to be building them for.
The main point is, to me, solar is an individual solution. What government needs to do is to attract local manufacturing of the panels, cheaper prices, may be even subsidy so people can individually covert there homes to this clean energy source and thus take the load off the national grid. A huge role can be played by installing two way meters by WAPDA through which a consumer can also act as a producer and if there home is producing surplus energy via Solar Panels in the afternoons, that energy is sold to the national grid via these meters (that is how it is in MANY countries and it will give a huge intensive to general public to shift to solar). While i write these long posts against Solar power plants, it will be worthy to mention that i have 16 panels installed at my home and my whole house including air conditioners are on Solar now.
That is what more and more people need to do and it will go a LONG way in solving our energy problems as well as producing enough clean energy for individual use. A national level, other options from a long list need to be considered.
