India crosses 5 GW-mark for solar installations
Thursday, December 03, 2015
By: ET
NEW DELHI: The cumulative installed capacity of solar power in India has crossed the 5 GW mark.
"While total commissioned utility solar capacity in India reaches 4.7 GW; rooftop capacity stands at 525 MW. In 2015 year to date, close to 2 GW solar capacity has been commissioned," Consultancy firm Bridge To India (BTI) said.
BTI Managing Director Vinay Rustagi said in the statement, "Solar sector has got great momentum with capacity addition in 2015 more than doubling up over last year and total pipeline of over 15 GW of projects under bidding-cum-development."
Encouraged by falling costs and growing need for green energy, states like Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu have all announced substantial policy initiatives, he said.
Rajasthan, Gujarat and MP have historically been the front runners, but the four southern Indian states are expected to dominate the market over next 2 years.
As of today, the country has a solar project pipeline of 15.7 GW. The financial year 2016-17 will be Indian solar market's transition year: annual capacity addition could top 6 GW with India becoming one of the leading solar nations worldwide, it said.
In the rooftop sector, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Gujarat are leading the total installed capacity.
In 2015, about 240 MW of rooftop capacity was added despite lack of any major rooftop specific initiatives.
"Consumer awareness has improved significantly and both business and residential consumers are keen to tap into rooftop solar. We expect the market to grow at over 50 per cent rate in the next few years," it said.
Solar Parks in India – observations and lessons learnt.
- By Mr. Ashish Parekh, Project Officer (solar), Gujarat Energy Research and Management Institute (GERMI)
Following the world’s largest democratic elections last year, the new government had made its intentions clear that it wants India to be among the top solar markets in the world by announcing a revised solar target of 100 GW from the planned 20 GW solar power by 2022 under Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission. The government officially approved the capacity target after a meeting of India’s Union cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The emphasis on addition of solar capacity is also evident from its major share of almost 57% (100 GW) out of the proposed 175 GW of renewable energy. The drastic fall in solar power costs from Rs. 20 per unit to nearly Rs. 5.5 per unit in the span of a few years has prompted the government to carve out such an ambitious target. The target has been split into 60 GW of large and medium scale Grid connected solar power projects and 40 GW rooftop projects. This is expected to require an investment of around INR 6000 billion along with conducive policies, effective deployment mechanisms by implementing agencies and favourable support from financial institutions. In addition, it is expected to boost the indigenous manufacturing industry as well as create large number of jobs to meet the target.
India already has 4096 MW of installed grid-connected solar PV generation capacity. Out of which, almost 3740 MW are ground mounted power projects and 356 MW are rooftop power projects. Although the installed capacity has grown at around 229% CAGR over a period of four years owing to falling module prices, the government’s introduction of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM) scheme and various state policies, giving momentum for incremental development of solar power. Still, the capacity addition target of 2200 MW of JNNSM Phase I was not achieved. The sector has been fraught with challenges as land acquisition, delay in policy level and financial clearance, lack of enforcement of Renewable Purchase Obligations (RPO) by state nodal agencies, poor financial health of DISCOMS and higher per unit cost of power.
Utility scale grid-connected solar power projects can be set up either through medium and large scale ranging from 1 MW to 50 MW or through Solar Parks, that are concentrated zones of solar projects of different scales at a single location having common civil infrastructure and evacuation facilities. These can be to the tune of 500 MW. Both the schemes of development of solar power projects have its own merits, demerits and challenges. The government of India laid the framework of development of Solar Parks under the JNNSM policy. Large sized projects have a natural potential to bring down the cost of solar power. Therefore, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has announced the development of 25 such Ultra Mega Solar Power projects (UMSPPs) each having minimum capacity of 500 MW to a maximum of 1000 MW, thereby targeting around 20,000 MW of installed solar power capacity through this route.
Acquisition of land for solar power projects has always been a cause of concern for the developers. Since solar projects are land intensive (approximately 5 acres of land is required for 1 MW of solar power), developers prefer to put up utility scale solar power projects on unusable, barren or non-agricultural land at far-off locations whose cost is lower than land closer to urban or rural habitable or agricultural areas. Although it might seem counter-intuitive, the average cost of land acquisition for UMSPPs turns out more than individual medium scale projects on account of landowners subsequently increasing the prices upon negotiation with developers. Also, the legal procedure for clearing the status of land on government records (e.g. from agricultural to non-agricultural) becomes a hassle for a large chunk of land as compared to smaller areas of land. As observed from the experiences of the first Solar Park in India, this increased average cost of land acquisition eventually gets passed on to the developers.
Solar power is a non-continuous source of generation. The average capacity factor for solar utility scale non-tracking solar power plants ranges from 20% to 24%. For utility scale power projects, there are no energy storage solutions available as of today. Also, solar power poses challenges in load scheduling on account of effect of seasonal factors like cloud covers and rain. Due to this inherent variability, the impact on grid from large-scale solar parks becomes intensified as compared to individual medium scale solar power projects.
However, UMSPPs also have the inherent advantage of optimization of project cost because of the benefits of available civil and evacuation infrastructure. Developers get cleared land for setting up solar projects with very little need for land development, road connectivity to site, availability of water for construction and subsequent operation & maintenance (O&M), transmission facilities consisting of pooling substation, construction power, telecommunication facilities, flood mitigation measures like drainage system, parking, warehousing and manpower accommodation facilities wherever possible. All these facilities save a lot of resources and time for the developer eventually optimizing the overall project cost.
The ‘Gujarat Solar Park’ is a pioneering first-of-its-kind example of UMSPP with clear land and transmission facilities. Spread across 5,834 acres of unused land in Patan district of Gujarat, it has a capacity of 590 MW out of which 345 MW have been commissioned, making it Asia’s largest Solar Park till date. Development cost of Gujarat Solar Park was around INR 4,922 Crores, which includes INR 550 Crores for infrastructure and land acquisition and approximately INR 4,422 Crores for Solar Power Plant (Developers investment). Cleared land is leased to developers who get the abovementioned facilities by the implementing agency Gujarat Power Corporation Ltd. (GPCL).
Identification of a vast unused land as well as acquisition has been a quite a challenge for the implementing agency GPCL. Also, since such a huge task of development of facilities of road linkages, transmission infrastructure, water availability and other such infrastructure like lighting, telecommunication, drainage had not been undertaken in India before at a remote location, the implementing agency had to plan the development work such that the development work carried out by all sub agencies was coordinated and the bottlenecks were cleared in a timely manner. The Solar Park project was launched in December 2010 and commissioned on December 2011. Challenges in terms of creating of civil infrastructure like water reservoir, road linkages and pooled substation in harsh climatic conditions have been a challenging task in terms of labour and availability of machinery. As with any such projects of an unprecedented nature, development of Gujarat Solar Park was a challenging task that was accomplished with good planning and effective implementation.
If India is to achieve its target of 60 GW of grid connected ground mounted solar capacity addition, the government has to ensure a timely policy and financial clearances as well as innovative business models to make sure the planned UMSPPs get commissioned.
