Solar Power in India Since 2014

By Feb 2020, India had installed 35 GW of solar power generation capacity. Solar power tariffs in India are among the lowest in the world.

As of 2019, a third of the world’s total installed solar capacity was in China, and 7 % in India.

The NDA government chose a strategy that prioritised retaining a low minimum tariff on projects while increasing protection against imported panels, thereby forcing developers to buy panels at a higher cost. Since then, bidding processes have slowed down, highlighting the incompatibility of these goals. 

In Jul 2020 Modi said that as part of Atma Nirbhar Bharat, the country’s aim is to end its dependence on import of all equipment, including solar panels.

International experts said in March 2020 that India has seen too much policy inconsistency and change, as well as state-centre conflicts, plus the drag of national policy objective contradictions to be on track to achieve the goal of creating 175 GW renewables capacity by 2020.

The history of Solar Power in India till 2014

The Department of Non-Conventional Energy Sources was formedin 1982. 

Indian renewable energy development agency was formed in 1987 to operate a revolving fund for developing, promoting and commercialization of New and Renewable Sources of Energy.

From the late 90s, Independent Renewable Power Producers were given the right to wheel the (renewable) power through existing transmission lines of the State Electricity Boards on payment of reasonable charges for selling the power to any third party in the country. 

Upgradation of technology for solar photovoltaic cells was undertaken.

By 2007, 3000 villages were electrified using solar technologies. There were 2000 solar power plants in operation, and over 6 lakh solar lanterns / 3 lakhs home lighting systems in use. Over 60,000 street lighting systems were in operation.

Government of India launched Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission in 2010, as one of its eight missions under National Action Plan on Climate Change. It was believed that solar power can be important in attaining energy independence. 

As of April 2014, India's total installed capacity through grid connected solar power plants had crossed 2.2 GW.

India's power sector is not out of the woods yet..

By the end of calendar year 2015, despite poor hydro electricity generation, India had become a power surplus nation with huge electric power generation capacity idling for want of power demand.  Due to tepid growth in electricity consumption, coal stocks are continuously building up at power stations as well as coal mines.

Yet in 2018, Telengana was not getting 2000 MW of power that had been contracted to be given to it. And in Karnataka, 'As a power crisis looms large in Karnataka in the wake of acute coal shortage, chief minister H D Kumaraswamy Tuesday said the Centre was not allocating the state’s share of coal despite repeated requests.'

Many coal plants are unable to get the coal they need from Government owned Coal India. Financially stressed government owned power boards are unable to do long term power purchase agreements with the coal plants, making them financially unviable. As much as USD 65 billion is tied up in stressed assets in coal plants which could cripple indian banks. 

In light of these developments, a number of coal plant developers have decided to abandon projects. The Global Coal Plant Tracker suggests that 573 GW of coal plants in India have been canceled between 2010 and June 2018. 

As of March 2018, 65 % of the installed capacity for power generation in india was fired from fossil fuels, and the rest from renewables and nuclear power. 

At the same time the solar generation scenario looks far from rosy duty to a mess in the policies. Recently, a series of pre-bid meetings and repeated extensions of the bid submission deadline have not yielded the desired response from solar developers to the Solar Energy Corporation of India’s manufacturing-linked tender for 10 GW of PV power. which would be 10 % of the the national target of 100 GW of solar by 2022

As an aside, U.S. coal-producers have been hard hit by the decline in coal used to generate electric power, which has fallen from 48 percent of the U.S. generation mix in 2008 to 28 percent today. U.S. coal production has dropped 35 percent in that same time period.