“There is tremendous potential for floating solar PV (photovoltaic) projects in India. Certain estimates of water bodies in India indicate there are 2,167 natural lakes (wetlands) and 65,253 man-made lakes in India,” Uma Rajarathnam, associate vice president (Clean Energy and Environment Projects) of Bangalore-based Enzen Global Solutions, told IANS in an interview.

Enzen signed a memorandum of understanding with French company Ciel-et-Terre in Bangalore Nov 15 to set up floating solar power plants in various states generating power up to 50 MW.

The French firm’s team was part of the 19 delegates from various European firms who visited Bangalore Nov 14-18 to sell their knowhow in water and waste water treatment, biomass refining, setting up floating photovoltaic systems on water bodies, automated waste collection and restoring lakes and rivers.

Their visit was arranged by European Business and Technology Centre (EBTC), which estimates the Indian market for environment-friendly technology is $10 billion and growing at 15 percent every year.
Enzen and Ciel-et-Terre are working out details of the number of plants and their location, Rajarathnam said.

Tata Power announced in March that it will set up India’s first floating solar PV project on a pilot basis in association with Australian solar power company Sunengy. It is likely to come up in Pune by the end of this year. “In peninsular India, manmade tanks were developed traditionally for harvesting rainwater and the three states of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh alone have a total tank water surface area of 19,960 sq km. If even one percent of this water surface were to be utilised for floating PV, the generation potential is about 3,260 MW,” Rajarathnam said.

Apart from Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat also have numerous water bodies in addition to very high solar radiation levels that make this technology a very attractive option, she said. Kerala, Orissa and West Bengal too offer potential in their brackish water bodies to set up floating PV projects, Rajarathnam said.

The cost of power from these plants will be comparable to ground-based solar energy plants. The cost of solar energy, at present, is higher than power from conventional hydro or thermal plants. However, the cost will come down as prices of PV panels is falling, Rajarathnam said.

“Lower costs (of PV panels) together with the subsidies being offered by the national and state governments through various schemes such as the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission make capital intensive solar PV projects commercially viable and attractive,” she said.

They will also eliminate the need for land, acquisition of which for industrial, infrastructure and housing projects has become a major issue of confrontation among land owners, governments and political parties in almost every state.
Agencies

Bharat Bhargava, director at MNRE and in-charge of solar power projects, told Solarcon India 2011 here Wednesday that bidding process would be completed by the month end for 350 MW under second batch of projects of first phase of National Solar Mission. The mission is aimed at installing 20 GW of solar power by 2022.

Under the first phase, 1,100 MW power would be produced. Bhargava later told reporters that 218 applications were received for the batch two projects. India had only two MW capacity when the mission was launched in January 2010 and by the end of October 2011, the capacity of 125 MW was on the ground.

“There are 35 projects already functional. This activity started recently. Wait till 2013 for it to really take off,” he said. Besides National Solar Mission, there are policies by various states like Gujarat, Maharashta, Karnataka and Rajasthan. MahaGenco is setting up 125 MW capacity plant in Maharashtra. Tata Power and Reliance are building 40 MW plants each to meet their own requirements.

He said the cost of installation per MW of solar power had come down from Rs.20 crore to Rs.10 crore. He suggested that Andhra Pradesh come up with its own policy as it has a robust manufacturing industry in Hyderabad. On the land allotment for solar power projects, he said Rajasthan had allotted 8,000 acres of land in deserts while Gujarat has allotted 5,000 acres. “The projects are coming up in states where solar radiation is high like Rajasthan and Gujarat, parts of Andhra Pradesh and other pockets of other states,” he said.

Bhargava, however, said land would not be an issue once the cost reduces and rooftop plants are taken up on large scale. He told the conference that the policies of MNRE had created a momentum and fine tuning was being done to provide more concessions to the sector. Solarcon, the third edition of India’s largest event on solar energy, comprises an exhibition, a conference and parallel technical events. The three-day event is certified by the US Department of Commerce, and features an exclusive US Pavilion with 14 leading US companies participating.
Agencies

Bessemer Venture Partners and New Silk Route Partners are the other investors, Kiran Energy founder Ardeshir Contractor said in an interview in Mumbai. Kiran Energy is setting up a 20-megawatt solar plant in the western state of Gujarat that is using panels made by Sharp Corp. and getting financing from State Bank of India (SBIN) and Mizuho Financial Group Inc. (8411), Contractor said.

Another 5-megawatt plant in Rajasthan is using panels on trackers supplied by SunPower Corp. (SPWRA). The engineering contractor for the project is the solar unit of Mahindra Group, he said.

Mumbai-based Kiran Energy was founded last year by Contractor and Alan Rosling, a former director of Tata Group, where he aided overseas acquisitions including steelmaker Corus Group Ltd. and the car companies Land Rover and Jaguar.

New Silk Route was co-founded by former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) director Rajat Gupta and Parag Saxena, who is currently chief executive officer of the firm.
Agencies

Ensuring affordable, adequate and uninterrupted power supply to domestic and other consumers remains one of the major challenges before the country. There is also an increasing concern and growing interest to reduce reliance on fossil fuel and other non-renewable sources of energy. Time is, therefore, ripe to opt for cleaner and greener fuel.

“Solar energy is a clean energy,” said V K Tiwari, project officer, UPNEDA. With over 300 clear sunny days available annually in India, there is a huge potential to tap, store and retrieve solar power – much more than the current power requirements. However, the actual exploitation of solar power to meet the energy requirements of the country is insignificant when compared to other energy resources.One of the major reasons for the solar energy not being popular is the high input cost. The solar panel and battery, which is must for the solar energy set-up, comes at a high cost. “We are working to bring this cost down,” said Tiwari. GoI has launched the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM) as a major initiative to promote ecologically sustainable growth while addressing country’s energy security challenges.

The immediate focus of the mission is to set up an enabling environment for solar energy penetration in the country through a multi-agency approach for centralised and decentralised applications of solar energy. To cut the costs, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), GoI, has introduced a scheme to promote commercial marketing of solar energy systems and devices by extending capital and interest subsidy on loans availed from financial institutions by the target clientele.

UPNEDA is making efforts to promote use of solar energy systems and devices in the state. “Solar water heaters are being provided in Kasturba Gandhi hostels in the state,” said Arun Kumar Srivastava, publicity officer, UPNEDA. Besides, in many of the primary health centres (PHCs), refrigerators are working on solar power to store medicines under certain temperature.
Times of india 

“This project brings OPIC’s financing for renewable energy in India to more than US $400 million,” said OPIC president and CEO Elizabeth Littlefield. “OPIC is proud to be supporting India’s impressive ambitions to shift to a less carbon-intensive economy.”

Project sponsor Applied Solar Technologies (AST) will use the OPIC loan to supplement cellular towers’ diesel-powered generators with solar hybrid energy systems that use proprietary controllers to integrate and optimize usage through photovoltaic technology, electricity from the electric grid, a battery bank charged by solar panels, and existing generators.

OPIC and other US trade and investment finance agencies played an important role in the US-India Partnership to Advance Clean Energy (PACE). This project, as well as support for Husk Power in Bihar, Azure Power in Punjab, the India-wide South Asia Clean Energy Fund, and two recently announced renewable resources investment funds that can invest in India, are examples of the US commitment to to help India reach its clean energy objectives.

He also said that the country has good potential for solar power as it receives solar energy equivalent to over 5,000 trillion kWh per year, which is far more than the total energy consumption of the country. He said the daily average solar energy incident varies from 4 – 7 kWh per square meter of the surface area depending upon the location and time of the year. The Minister added that the solar radiation is available at most locations in the country for about 300 days in a year.

He added that the gGovernment has launched Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission in January 2010, which aims to set up 20,000 MW grid solar power by 2022 in addition to 2,000 MW of off-grid solar power. He said deployment of solar power is, thereafter, expected to increase rapidly due to declining prices of solar power, indigenization and technology improvements.
PIB

“The scope of work includes the design, engineering, procurement, supply, erection, testing and commissioning for the entire project. The project is scheduled for completion in 20 months,” the company said in a filing to the stock exchanges.

Meanwhile, a media report suggests that the company has tied up with an Israeli company for executing this order. Abhijeet Projects is the special purpose vehicle of Corporate Ispat and Alloys Ltd, which won the 50 MW project through the bidding process under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission.

The stock opened at Rs 127 and hit a high of Rs 140 on the NSE. A combined 70,000 shares have changed hands on the counter in opening deals.
Agencies

NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam Ltd., or NVVN, the state-run power trader that will buy electricity from the plants, accepted 35 projects that were able to submit evidence they had arranged funding, the government said in a press release. All seven solar-thermal projects, which account for 470 Mw of capacity or 75 per cent of what was awarded in the December auction, made the cut, Deepak Gupta, secretary of the New and Renewable Energy ministry, said.

Companies building the larger thermal projects include billionaire Anil Ambani’s Reliance Power Ltd. (RPWR) and Lanco Infratech Ltd (LANCI), one of the largest non-state power producers. They had faced forfeiting as much as 1.89 billion rupees (US $42 million) in bank guarantees if not accepted. Gupta declined to identify the two projects that were rejected except to say in a phone interview that each held a license to build a 5-mw photovoltaic plant.

Solar thermal plants use sunlight to heat liquids that produce steam for generators; photovoltaic plants use panels to turn sunlight directly into power. The projects face no further deadlines before commissioning, Gupta said. The accepted 140 Mw of photovoltaic projects need to be completed by January. The solar thermal projects have until 2013.
Agencies

Solar photovoltaic projects, which use panels to convert sunlight directly into electricity, must be 3 Mw to 10 Mw in size, it said. Solar thermal plants that use the sun to heat liquids to produce steam for generators must be at least 5 Mw.

India aims to boost development of alternative energy as waning growth in conventional power output threatens to deepen a slowdown in Asia’s third-largest economy. State-run programs have been among the most ambitious, such as western Gujarat state, which has awarded 959 Mw of solar projects, almost the capacity of one nuclear power plant. Karnataka will use a bidding process that will award capacity to those developers who offer to sell their solar power at the steepest discount to the state tariff, the policy said.

The current tariff for solar power plants set by the state electricity regulator is Rs 14.50 per kilowatt-hour for photovoltaic plants and Rs 11.35 per kilowatt-hour for solar thermal plants, according to a tariff order on the website of the KERC. The state requires power distribution companies to procure 0.25 percent of their electricity from solar resources, which will create demand for sun-powered electricity, according to the policy.
Agencies

The payment security scheme aims to help solar power producers arrange finances for their projects, the government said in a statement issued after a cabinet meeting. The scheme will help the federal government meet targets under its National Solar Mission, which aims to build 1,000 megawatt of solar power capacity by 2013 in the first phase. India aims to add 20,000 Mw of solar power by 2022 under the solar mission.

The scheme will be implemented by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy and NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam Ltd. will be able to draw funds from the account as per the scheme’s provisions, the statement said. NTPC Vidyut, a unit of India’s largest power generator NTPC Ltd., buys solar power from the producers and sells it to utilities bundled with coal-based power.

But most state-run distribution companies are cash-strapped with weak finances. This has elevated the risk of solar power producers not being paid for the electricity produced. That has affected solar companies building these new plants as lenders aren’t willing to give loans to projects where returns are risky. Solar companies that have been awarded projects under the mission’s first phase in particular are facing hurdles in arranging finances. For the projects awarded so far, companies have to raise funds by the end of June.

India currently has 20,000 MW of renewable energy capacity, constituting more than 11 per cent of the country’s total power generation capacity of around 174 gigawatts.
Wall Street Journal