Subsidies not successful in popularising solar power use in India
By D. Murali and C. Ramesh/ May 14, 2007
Source: The Hindu
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/002200705141121.htm
Chennai, May 14: With the exception of a few villages covered by rural electrification programmes, solar energy penetration continues to remain low and far too under-utilised compared to its potential, according to Mr Amit Barve, Market Development Manager (India and neighbouring countries) of Schott Solar, a Germany-based photovoltaic component manufacturer.
Speaking to Business Line on the potential of solar energy and how it can be tapped to partially meet the country’s power requirements, he said that the penetration of solar energy is very low in the cities too. “The usage is very low compared to installations happening in European countries and the US, which actually do not have the potential sunshine that India has.”
Mr Barve is of the opinion providing subsidies has not been successful in popularising the usage of solar panels. “Some States give capital subsidies for solar home lighting systems and lanterns. But once the equipment is sold and subsidy recovered, nobody bothers about proper running of equipment or services, which promotes sale of low-quality equipment.”
He pointed to the trend in the US and most European countries, where the “feed in tariff” model encourages every individual to sell energy to utilities, which pays for the difference in the units used/sold. “This has become so popular that in Germany alone, installation of 900 MW was done in one year.”
According to him, there are other factors behind slow adoption of solar power. “Theft is a problem in publicly installed equipment, but adoption is slow mainly on account of low awareness and lack of focused approach from authorities concerned, apart from and cost. Shadow-free mounting space is a typical problem for the metro customer.”
The cost factor is on the downswing, since prices of solar modules have gone down considerably both for manufacturer and for end-user. “Almost all manufacturers are setting price reduction targets per year to see that this form of energy generation becomes widely usable.”
A single solar module-based home lighting system with optional DC fan can cost anywhere between Rs 20,000 and Rs 35,000. The equipment is the user’s personal power generating system without recurring cost and minimal maintenance.
One of the biggest advantages of solar power equipment is that they require minimum maintenance since there are no moving parts. “The minimal maintenance can also be done by a layman. It only involves cleaning of the modules to keep them dust-free.”
Maintenance becomes an issue only in the case of public lighting. “Solar power streetlight do not require any underground cabling, but maintenance will be required since the power will be generated by the solar module placed at the top of the streetlight.”
By making such installations, streetlights can become independent from the State supply board and run every day from dusk to dawn, he added. “Housing societies can also chip in use of mini-generating equipment for pathway lighting, parking lights, staircase lighting and even battery charging of inverters.”
On the level of indigenisation, Mr Barve said that most of the manufacturers are involved in making solar modules and a few in solar cells.
“Indigenisation has been very successful at the product or system level, say solar streetlights or home lighting systems. But no major R&D activities are seen in wafer manufacturing in India. In fact, no company in India is involved in manufacturing of semiconductor wafers.”
On the potential energy generation during a typical scorching day in summer, Mr Barve said that quantification is difficult, but that the potential is immense.
“Quantification is difficult because the energy is abundantly available in sunlight. It is up to us to generate as much as we can by using solar modules, which in turn depends on the capacity of solar modules installed. A typical example would be using an 80W module to charge a 25 A battery fully per day.”
Schott Solar is a significant player in the integrated photovoltaic (PV) component manufacturer space in Europe. It has a presence in the entire value chain of the PV market, right from manufacturing of wafers to making cells, solar modules as well as systems. The company’s current manufacturing capacity is in the range of 130 MW per year and its manufacturing locations are spread across Germany, the Czech Republic and the US.