India's Renewable Energy Sector

Since after signing the Paris Climate Deal, the renewable energy installation is in high rise in India. By end of FY20, India's renewable energy is at 132 GW (36% of total installed) and at 82 GW excluding Hydropower (22%). Back in 31st March 2014, the installed Solar and Wind power capacity was 2632 MW and 23354 MW respectively. By 31 August 2020, the installed Solar and Wind energy rose to 35739 MW (1357%) and 38124 MW (163%) respectively. This makes India 4th largest Wind and 5th largest Solar installed nations in the World. As a result India's Wind and Solar combined share rose from 3% of total generation in 2015 to 10% in H1 of 2020. Coal share in same time span fell from 77% to 68%. The International Solar Alliance (ISA) is an alliance of 121 countries initiated by India, most of them being sunshine countries, which lie either completely or partly between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. The primary objective of the alliance is to work for efficient consumption of solar energy to reduce dependence on fossil fuels.

Some of the biggest Solar Parks in India are -

1. Bhadla Solar Park, Rajasthan - 2245 MW - World's largest

2. Shakti Sthala, Pavagada, Karnataka - 2050 MW - World's 2nd largest (cost ₹14400 crore)

3. Kurnool Ultra Mega, Andhra Pradesh - 1000 MW

4. Ananthapuram Ultra Mega, Andhra Pradesh - 900 MW

5. Rewa Ultra Mega, Madhya Pradesh - 750 MW

6. Charnaka Solar, Gujarat - 690 MW

7. Kamuthi, Tamil Nadu - 648 MW

India has World's 3rd and 4th largest onshore wind farms. They are -

#3 - Muppandal, Tamil Nadu - 1500 MW

#4 - Jaisalmer, Rajasthan - 1064 MW

Pune based Suzlon Energy Limited is one of the World's largest (5th largest based on MAKE) wind turbine manufacturer. The cumulative capacity (2020) is 17 GW. The other wind turbine manufacturer in India are - 

  1. GE Wind Energy (American, HQ : Pune, India)
  2. Inox Wind (Parent: Gujarat Fluorochemicals Ltd., Mfg unit - Gujarat, MP, HP)
  3. RRB Energy (HQ: New Delhi, Mfg unit - Chennai)
  4. Vestas India (Danish, began operation in India in 1997; Nacelles - Chennai; Blades - Ahmedabad; R&D - Largest outside Denmark in Chennai)
  5. Wind World India Ltd (estd in 1994, formerly Enercon)
  6. Siemens Gamesa (The company has two blade factories in Nellore (Andhra Pradesh), and Halol (Gujarat), a nacelle factory in Mamandur (Chennai, Tamil Nadu), and an operations & maintenance center in Red Hills (Chennai, Tamil Nadu).)
  7. LM Wind Power (Subsidiary of GE, wind rotor blades maker, opened manufacturing unit in Vadodara in 2016)

India has a solar cell manufacturing capacity of 3 GW, where as the annual demand is 20 GW. So a majority of Solar cells are imported from likes of JinkoSolar(HQ: Shanghai, China), JA Solar (HQ: Beijing, China), Trina Solar(HQ: Changzhou, China) etc. India currently makes enough solar panels to produce 16GW power, solar modules to generate 8 GW and enough cells to generate 3GW. There are almost 100 module makers and 15 cell producers, largely for the domestic market, but no wafer makers. Some of the Indian Solar cell manufacturers that are competing with Chinese makers are - Adani Solar (Mundra SEZ), Waaree (HQ: Mumbai), Vikram Solar (HQ: Kolkata), Goldi Solar (HQ: Surat) etc. Top 10 solar PV project developers in India accounted for over 68% of all utility scale project installations. ReNew Power was the top developer with the most utility-scale solar installations in the year 2019. Huawei was the top solar inverter supplier in the Indian market with approximately 54% of total shipments in 2019. But everything has both positive and negative sides. Solar Modules use potentially hazardous materials, including lead compounds, polymers, cadmium compounds etc. , known as "Solar Waste". IRENA projected that the Solar waste could reach 78 MMT by 2050. Kochi Airport in Kerala became World's first Solar powered Airport. Some of the biggest Solar bidders in India are - Adani Green Energy, Azure Power, MoserBaer Power, Kotak Urja, ACME Group, TATA Solar etc. A global ranking on Sep. 2020 revealed that Adani Green Energy (AGEL), part of the Adani Group conglomerate, had overtaken Hong Kong's GCL New Energy to become the world's top solar developer. Some of the leading Solar EPC contractors are - Stopnot Energy, Sure Energy, Involute Engineering, Red Solar etc.

The export of Indian solar cells and modules surged from ₹847 crore in 2018-19 to ₹1,506 crore in 2019-20, the volume growth was also robust, rising a remarkable 175 per cent over the same period, from 2.5 million units to 6.9 million units in the same period.


 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Asian Dream - China, Japan and India

Image
Many experts, politicians, scholars believe 21st century is going to be “Asian Century”. To make this a reality 3 countries should come and work together – Soaring Dragon, Rising Elephant and Assertive Godzilla i.e. China, India and Japan. Below are the reasons I would like to mention – 1. Nominal GDP wise top 3 Asian countries are China, Japan and India. In terms of PPP, the order is China, India and Japan. For a rising Asia, these 3 countries should join hands. 2. In terms of Forex Reserve, the Top 3 Asian economies are China (>$3 Trillion), Japan (> $1 Trillion) and India (> $500 Billion). Surprisingly these 3 nations are also top 5 in the World. 3. China, Japan and India also has 6 (JPX, SSE, SEHK, SZSE, BSE, NSE) out of World’s Top 12 biggest Stock exchanges in terms of Market capitalization. Imagine the enormous potential if we create something like Euronext in Asia. 4. China, Japan, South Korea, India and Taiwan are always featured in top 10 nation Fortune Global 2000 c
Read more

India's Supercomputer Journey

Image
 India's Supercomputer journey is no less than an astounding achievement. In 1987, USA declined when India asked to purchase Supercomputers, developed by CRAY thinking India may develop nuclear weapon from it. The CRAY supercomputer, designated No. 1205 by Cray, was built for the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore but it was never delivered. At a conference at CSIR (Council of Scientific and Industrial Research), in 1987, Rajiv Gandhi was discussing this problem with many renowned Indian scientists. They expressed their discontent on the PM asking other countries to setup India’s supercomputer. DoE established the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) with initial investment of Rs 300 million produced PARAM 8000 supercomputer in 1991. Dr. Vijay P. Bhatkar is known as Father of PARAM Series Supercomputer. Indian scientists developed their supercomputer by linking together as many as 256 small, readily available computers in a technique known as massive parallel
Read more

India's preparation for upcoming Tokyo Olympics

Image
 As we are going towards Tokyo Olympic next year, let's see how we performed in Asian and World Championships in 2019. Archery Asian (Bangkok, Thailand) 1 Gold, 2 Silver, 4 Bronze World ('s-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands) 0 Gold, 1 Silver, 2 Bronze Athletics Asian (Doha, Qatar) 3 Gold, 7 Silver, 7 Bronze World (Doha, Qatar) 0 Gold, 0 Silver, 0 Bronze (Created 3 new National Records) Badminton Asian (Wuhan, China) 0 Gold, 0 Silver, 0 Bronze World (Basel, Switzerland) 1 Gold, 0 Silver, 1 Bronze Boxing Asian (Bangkok, Thailand) 2 Gold, 4 Silver, 7 Bronze World (Men : Yekaterinburg, Women : Ulan-Ude, Russia) 0 Gold, 2 Silver, 4 Bronze Cycling   (As this is new sport, considering Junior Asian and World Championship performance of Track Cycling. There are also BMX, Mountain and Road Cycling) Asian (Jakarta, Indonesia) 4 Gold, 4 Silver, 2 Bronze World (Frankfurt, Germany) 1 Gold, 1 Silver, 1 Bronze Fencing Asian (Chiba, Japan) 0 Gold, 0 Silver, 0 Bronze
Read more