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INDIA SOLAR POWER DREAM

INDIA SOLAR POWER DREAM

Why in News?

Government of India has set the target to expand India’s renewable energy installed capacity to 500 GW by 2030.

The total installed capacity for renewable energy in India is 151.4 GW.

The following is the breakup of total installed capacity for Renewables:

• Wind power: 40.08 GW
• Solar Power: 50 GW
• Biopower: 10.61 GW
• Small Hydro Power: 4.83 GW
• Large Hydro: 46.51 GW

Present Solar Power capacity:

• 45 solar parks of aggregate capacity 37 GW have been approved in India.
• Solar Parks in Pavagada (2 GW), Kurnool (1 GW) and Bhadla-II (648 MW) are included in the top 5 operational solar parks of 7 GW capacity in the country.
• The world’s largest renewable energy park of 30 GW capacity solar-wind hybrid project is under installation in Gujarat.

Challenges faced by renewable sector in India.

• Heavily Dependent on Imports: India doesn't have enough module and PV cell manufacturing capacity. The current solar module manufacturing capacity is limited to 15 GW per year, whereas the domestic production is around 3.5 GW only. Further, out of the 15 GW of module manufacturing capacity, only 3-4 GW of modules are technologically competitive and worthy of deployment in grid-based projects.
• Raw Material Supply: The silicon wafer, the most expensive raw material, is not manufactured in India. It currently imports 100% silicon wafers and around 80% cells. Further, other key raw materials, such as silver and aluminum metal pastes for making electrical contacts, are also almost 100% imported.

Renewable energy sources have a broad range of total systemwide occupational health and safety impacts, but a relatively narrow range of average risk to individual workers.As India is making significant progress in the development of solar PV modules, but for it to become a manufacturing hub, it will require more policy interventions like developing home-grown technologies which could, in the short-term, work with the industry to provide them with trained human resource, process learnings, root-cause analysis through right testing and, in the long term, develop India’s own technologies. This would further require substantial investment in several clusters which operate in industry-like working and management conditions, appropriate emoluments, and clear deliverables.