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From the observation tower in the Thar desert and as far as the eye can see, the dark blue arrays of a million solar panels can be seen sitting silently on the red dust. The Charanka solar park in Gujarat is an “ultra-mega” power project – the Indian government’s phrase – and the biggest in Asia.
The Gujarat Solar Park in Gujarat, India, is Asia’s largest solar power station with an installed capacity of 1,000MW. Photograph: Global Warming Images//Rex Features
The project was the brainchild of Narendra Modi. As chief minister of Gujarat, Modi spurred companies to build more than 900MW of solar plant across the state in just a couple of years. Now, as prime minister, the question is whether he can repeat the feat across India, which receives more sunlight than any other country in the G20.
Boosting clean energy over dirty fossil fuels is high on the agenda and solar is booming, with new installations around the world doubling every two years. As production goes up, panel costs are plummeting – down 80% since 2008, according to the New Climate Economy report released on 15 September. This puts solar on the edge of beating coal and gas on price.
Such energy choices are now on Modi’s desk: he has pledged to give electricity to every one of the 300 million Indians living in the dark, a feat he achieved on the smaller stage of Gujarat, and energy experts in India are impressed with the impetus given in his first 100 days to renewable energy, particularly solar.
Three more ultra-mega solar parks were backed with cash in July, as were solar-powered irrigation pumps and canal-top solar plants. The electric fences on India’s sensitive northern borders will be solar-powered as the military installs 1,000MW of panels to replace expensive diesel generators across its posts. Another 7,000MW of solar is out for tender across the country and the rooftops of Delhi are to be bedecked with panels under a new scheme.
Elsewhere, glitzy new shopping malls in India’s blackout-prone cities are turning to solar for cheaper and more reliable energy, while thirsty Chennai is experimenting with solar-powered desalination.
Modi’s power minister, Piyush Goyal, says solar has a glittering future. The previous government’s target of 20,000MW of solar by 2022 will be smashed, he says. “It will be much, much larger. I think for India to add 10,000MW a year [of solar] and six, or seven or eight of wind every year is not very difficult to envisage.”
All acknowledge that coal must provide the steady power needed to underpin India’s rapid economic development: if the 360 million Indians living in poverty were a nation, it would be the third most populous on Earth. But the extent to which plummeting solar panel costs and their sometimes surprising fringe benefits help solar eat into coal’s share of the energy mix is crucial to keeping emissions down.
On a 15-metre-wide (50ft) irrigation canal that cuts through the green cotton and barley fields of Gujarat, another Modi project illustrates the extra benefits. Here, 3,600 solar panels stretch as far as the eye can see along the waterway, but do not just produce power. With water the critical resource for the farmers, the shading of the canal by the solar array saves an estimated 9 million litres of water from evaporating each year while the cooling effect of the water under the panels edges up the electricity output.
Solar panels installed over canals
Furthermore, the part of the canal in the sun is clogged with reeds but in the shade of the panels, the water flows freely. Spanning the canal, while adding cost, also avoids covering valuable farmland with panels. “The canal is the property of the government, so the cost of the land goes away too,” says Ghodadra.
Modi is known to enjoy talking about the world-first canal project to the presidents and prime ministers he meets around the world and has backed a national expansion. Even using just 10% of the canals in Gujarat would give 2,200MW of solar power. Along with millions of solar water pumps, Goyal says this pushing of power into the countryside will lift the income of poor farmers and increase food security by extending growing seasons.
Solar power can also reach remote villages faster and cheaper than sending pylons striding across the land, says Pranav Mehta, chair of the National Solar Energy Federation of India. “The country needs more decentralised power, like rooftop solar, to reach the large parts of the country that the grid has not reached.”
India’s booming cities are another huge challenge, with many struggling with blackouts, particularly when temperatures soar and air conditioning is ramped up. Again, Modi’s 13-year tenure in Gujarat is providing the solar template. In September, it was announced that rooftop solar power projects in the state capital, Gandhinagar, will be replicated in Punjab and Delhi, where a storm at the end of May plunged its fragile grid into rolling blackouts for a week.
Goyal says rural and urban off-grid solar are being looked at “very actively”.
“Off-grid is a very viable solution, especially for small, remote villages,” he says, while new assessment for his department calculates a potential for 120,000MW of rooftop solar across India. Other assessments are even higher at 200,000MW. The minister is certainly generating enthusiasm in the industry.
“We have a government that is even more bullish than the entrepreneurs,” says Rahul Munjal, scion of the Hero motorcycle family, the world’s biggest makers of two-wheelers. His new company, Hero Future Energies, will complete 280MW of solar by 2015, three years after it started.
“The Modi factor is very real with solar. He recognizes that not only is solar very clean, it is also very fast to build,” says Pashupathy Gopalan, SunEdison’s managing director in south Asia and Africa. He says the cost of solar versus coal – the critical immediate factor – is near a tipping point. “Grid parity”, ie equal cost, has already been achieved for commercial and industrial customers putting panels on their roofs, Gopalan says, and is coming soon for other users.
A Village grandmother assembles a solar-powered light in Morabandar village on Elephanta Island.
Sajjad Hussain/AFP/Getty Images
Goyal says a key obstacle to ensuring solar power grabs its huge opportunity in India is getting the up-front capital at affordable interest rates – coal is relatively easy to fund, he says. The provision of clean energy finance will be a central one in the UN negotiations, which must deliver a global climate change deal by the end of 2015.
Pachauri is optimistic India under Modi can follow the cleaner energy path. “We have a prime minister who first, believes in climate change and, secondly, is a doer. It is a unique opportunity,” he says. “I believe you will see a snowballing of renewable energy developments in India in the next few years.”
Can Narendra Modi bring the solar power revolution to India? | Environment | The
GuardianIndia’s Shining Star – CHARANKA SOLAR PARK, GUJARAT | IndiaGetGreen blog
Solar power is the future. It is Modi's foresight and planning that would make India self sufficient in energy covering 100% of India in the very near future! Way to go!!
The Gujarat Solar Park in Gujarat, India, is Asia’s largest solar power station with an installed capacity of 1,000MW. Photograph: Global Warming Images//Rex Features
The project was the brainchild of Narendra Modi. As chief minister of Gujarat, Modi spurred companies to build more than 900MW of solar plant across the state in just a couple of years. Now, as prime minister, the question is whether he can repeat the feat across India, which receives more sunlight than any other country in the G20.
Boosting clean energy over dirty fossil fuels is high on the agenda and solar is booming, with new installations around the world doubling every two years. As production goes up, panel costs are plummeting – down 80% since 2008, according to the New Climate Economy report released on 15 September. This puts solar on the edge of beating coal and gas on price.
Such energy choices are now on Modi’s desk: he has pledged to give electricity to every one of the 300 million Indians living in the dark, a feat he achieved on the smaller stage of Gujarat, and energy experts in India are impressed with the impetus given in his first 100 days to renewable energy, particularly solar.
Three more ultra-mega solar parks were backed with cash in July, as were solar-powered irrigation pumps and canal-top solar plants. The electric fences on India’s sensitive northern borders will be solar-powered as the military installs 1,000MW of panels to replace expensive diesel generators across its posts. Another 7,000MW of solar is out for tender across the country and the rooftops of Delhi are to be bedecked with panels under a new scheme.
Elsewhere, glitzy new shopping malls in India’s blackout-prone cities are turning to solar for cheaper and more reliable energy, while thirsty Chennai is experimenting with solar-powered desalination.
Modi’s power minister, Piyush Goyal, says solar has a glittering future. The previous government’s target of 20,000MW of solar by 2022 will be smashed, he says. “It will be much, much larger. I think for India to add 10,000MW a year [of solar] and six, or seven or eight of wind every year is not very difficult to envisage.”
All acknowledge that coal must provide the steady power needed to underpin India’s rapid economic development: if the 360 million Indians living in poverty were a nation, it would be the third most populous on Earth. But the extent to which plummeting solar panel costs and their sometimes surprising fringe benefits help solar eat into coal’s share of the energy mix is crucial to keeping emissions down.
On a 15-metre-wide (50ft) irrigation canal that cuts through the green cotton and barley fields of Gujarat, another Modi project illustrates the extra benefits. Here, 3,600 solar panels stretch as far as the eye can see along the waterway, but do not just produce power. With water the critical resource for the farmers, the shading of the canal by the solar array saves an estimated 9 million litres of water from evaporating each year while the cooling effect of the water under the panels edges up the electricity output.
Solar panels installed over canals
Furthermore, the part of the canal in the sun is clogged with reeds but in the shade of the panels, the water flows freely. Spanning the canal, while adding cost, also avoids covering valuable farmland with panels. “The canal is the property of the government, so the cost of the land goes away too,” says Ghodadra.
Modi is known to enjoy talking about the world-first canal project to the presidents and prime ministers he meets around the world and has backed a national expansion. Even using just 10% of the canals in Gujarat would give 2,200MW of solar power. Along with millions of solar water pumps, Goyal says this pushing of power into the countryside will lift the income of poor farmers and increase food security by extending growing seasons.
Solar power can also reach remote villages faster and cheaper than sending pylons striding across the land, says Pranav Mehta, chair of the National Solar Energy Federation of India. “The country needs more decentralised power, like rooftop solar, to reach the large parts of the country that the grid has not reached.”
India’s booming cities are another huge challenge, with many struggling with blackouts, particularly when temperatures soar and air conditioning is ramped up. Again, Modi’s 13-year tenure in Gujarat is providing the solar template. In September, it was announced that rooftop solar power projects in the state capital, Gandhinagar, will be replicated in Punjab and Delhi, where a storm at the end of May plunged its fragile grid into rolling blackouts for a week.
Goyal says rural and urban off-grid solar are being looked at “very actively”.
“Off-grid is a very viable solution, especially for small, remote villages,” he says, while new assessment for his department calculates a potential for 120,000MW of rooftop solar across India. Other assessments are even higher at 200,000MW. The minister is certainly generating enthusiasm in the industry.
“We have a government that is even more bullish than the entrepreneurs,” says Rahul Munjal, scion of the Hero motorcycle family, the world’s biggest makers of two-wheelers. His new company, Hero Future Energies, will complete 280MW of solar by 2015, three years after it started.
“The Modi factor is very real with solar. He recognizes that not only is solar very clean, it is also very fast to build,” says Pashupathy Gopalan, SunEdison’s managing director in south Asia and Africa. He says the cost of solar versus coal – the critical immediate factor – is near a tipping point. “Grid parity”, ie equal cost, has already been achieved for commercial and industrial customers putting panels on their roofs, Gopalan says, and is coming soon for other users.
A Village grandmother assembles a solar-powered light in Morabandar village on Elephanta Island.
Sajjad Hussain/AFP/Getty Images
Goyal says a key obstacle to ensuring solar power grabs its huge opportunity in India is getting the up-front capital at affordable interest rates – coal is relatively easy to fund, he says. The provision of clean energy finance will be a central one in the UN negotiations, which must deliver a global climate change deal by the end of 2015.
Pachauri is optimistic India under Modi can follow the cleaner energy path. “We have a prime minister who first, believes in climate change and, secondly, is a doer. It is a unique opportunity,” he says. “I believe you will see a snowballing of renewable energy developments in India in the next few years.”
Can Narendra Modi bring the solar power revolution to India? | Environment | The
GuardianIndia’s Shining Star – CHARANKA SOLAR PARK, GUJARAT | IndiaGetGreen blog
Solar power is the future. It is Modi's foresight and planning that would make India self sufficient in energy covering 100% of India in the very near future! Way to go!!
