CHANDIGARH: The Punjab Government has initiated an ambitious program to install rooftop photovoltaic solar systems in 120 police stations in the state for power generation.  

Bikram Singh Majithia, Non Conventional Energy Minister, today said that Punjab Energy Development Authority would soon embark on a major programme for these installations in order to increase usage and popularize Solar PV technology for power generation. 

He said that these solar PV systems would be installed in all 120 police stations in the state and each system would generate 2.5 KW power for powering lighting and computer loads in the police stations. He said that the total cost of this project was Rs 6.6 crore.

Reiterating the resolve of Punjab Government to install Solar Power Systems on all government buildings by the end of 2017, Majithia said that the power generated through these rooftop systems would replace conventional energy and also provide backup power during grid shut downs. 

He said that PEDA was already promoting the installation of rooftop PV Power Plants in which capital subsidy was being provided as per the guidelines of Ministry of New and Renewable Energy guidelines, GOI. He said that these projects would also reduce generation cost, which was in the range of Rs. 6-7/Kilowatt hour in the long term and which was also almost comparable to the tariff being charged by the PSPCL from its consumers.

Divulging the details of rooftop solar power systems, Majithia said that PEDA has also carried out a detailed rooftop survey of major Government Buildings in the State and estimated potential was 40 MW. He said that solar power generated from the rooftops would also replace conventional power and provide backup power to buildings during grid outage including surplus power being exported to the PSPCL grid.

CHENNAI, MARCH 1:  

Kiran Energy today announced that it has commissioned a 55 MW DC solar voltaic power project in Rawra village of Jodhpur district of Rajasthan. With this, Kiran Energy’s portfolio of solar projects in the country totals 80 MW.

The company is also building clusters of solar projects in several States, including Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu. These clusters will have projects of capacities between 50 MW and 100 MW, Kiran Energy said in a press release.

L&T and Mahindra EPC did the ‘engineering, procurement and construction’ work for the 55 MW Rawra plant.

The 55 MW capacity is really three separate projects, with separate power purchase agreements with NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam (NVVN), a power-trading subsidiary of NTPC. These projects were won under the second batch of Phase I of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission.

Kiran Energy now operates the largest solar power plant cluster of 60MW with a combined evacuation at a single location in India, the release says.

The plant is expected to produce an average of more than 90,000 megawatt-hours of clean electricity per year, equivalent to the annual electricity needs of more than 2.75 lakh Indian households, reducing carbon emissions to the extent of 80,000 tonnes annually.

Kiran Energy is one of the leading clean energy utilities that has been developing and operating solar power projects across India. In Rajasthan and Gujarat, it now operates an aggregate of over 80MW power plants.

CHANDIGARH: A sum of Rs 16.25 crore has been allocated to UT administration for implementation of Model Solar City Programme. Ministry for new and renewable energy has already chosen Chandigarh as one of the cities to be developed into a solar city. Six rooftop solar photovoltaic power plants have been set up with power generation capacity of 975KW.

Though, The Energy and Resource Institute (TERI) had chalked out the broad outline in 2009, work on ground could not begin as the proposal was pending with the ministry of new and renewable energy for allocation of funds. According to the plan, a 25 Mega Watts solar photo voltaic (PV) plant would also be set up. As of now, UT has no electricity generation of its own. In its pre-feasibility report, TERI has identified 24 of the total 900 small and big parks being maintained by the municipal corporation, which could be looked as potential locations for tapping solar power.

New Delhi: Moser Baer on Wednesday commissioned 5 MW solar power project at Jodhpur in Rajasthan that will light over 70,000 rural households, the company said.

File photo

Moser Baer has developed the solar project jointly with the ministry of new and renewable energy (MNRE), Moser Baer said in a statement.

It is completed under migration scheme of Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM) launched during 2010.

“To promote rapid solarization of India, I would like to urge the MNRE to create a special corpus for funding solar projects, as financing these projects has been a major bottleneck,” Moser Baer Solar Systems chief executive officer (CEO) K. N. Subramaniam said.

The project will generate approximately 92 lakh units of electricity per annum and save carbon emission equivalent to 8,400 tonnes annually.

CHENNAI: When India's solar power developers want to choose a site for their project, they usually turn to NASAand its satellite images to identify the best locations.

This is because even though India is endowed with abundant sunshine, it is vital to know the exact spots to locate projects so that they become viable. The US space agency's radiation maps help them do this, but they are not quite adequate.

Now, an obscure government agency based in Chennai is promising to change that. It hopes to deliver within two years a state-of-the-art solar atlas of India that could clear a major hurdle obstructing speedy development of solar power projects.

The atlas, which will identify the solar hotspots where the sun's radiation has optimum intensity for power generation, will enable developers to accurately pinpoint locations for projects, according to the Centre for Wind Energy Technology, which is creating the database.

The expectation is that project developers, armed with the information, will be able to predict the plant's output with reasonable accuracy. Also, they can make a better choice of which solar technology (photovoltaic, solar thermal or any other) to use.

"Today we use old NASA data," said Vish Palekar, the chief executive officer of Mahindra Solar. His company just commissioned its first project, a 5 mw unit in Rajasthan, and plans to add 100 mw in about three years.

"To have info mapped in India with local conditions will help us further optimise prediction. The entire ecosystem, with solar atlas mapping, will see companies like ours getting aggressive in future," he added.

INDIA INC GIANTS EYEING SOLAR PIE

Sun-soaked India, which is chronically energy deficient, has drawn up a plan to generate 20,000 mw of solar power by 2022. To realise this goal, the Centre has created a national solar mission.

The national solar mission includes financial incentives and subsidies to attract investment in this form of clean energy. Out of India's installed power generation capacity of some 1.9 lakh mw, solar energy currently accounts for just over 100 mw.

But projects with many times that capacity are being planned, with prominent business houses such as the Tatas, Reliance and the Mahindras as well as smaller developers vying for a piece of the solar pie.

"A solar atlas will be very useful. But accuracy depends a lot on how data is being collected - via satellites or combined with ground-based measurements. If there's a 10% gap between actual radiation and what data shows, the energy output can fall by almost 20%," said James V Abraham, managing director & CEO ofSunborne Energy Technologies, a Haryana-based company backed by private equity fund General Catalyst Partners.

For now, radiation data for most locations in India are largely provided by satellites from Nasa and others. Some developers have observed a variation in the actual power output compared to the estimates made from satellite data, said Bharat Bhushan Agrawal, analyst at India Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

"The solar resource measured at ground level is more reliable than satellite data. This is why some developers have been doing their own ground data measurements."

The Centre for Wind Energy Technology will also use satellite imagery - it is requesting the Indian space agency Isro for help. But before that, an important part of the project was completed last month.

This involved measuring radiation in 51 locations in India, which threw up some surprises, including the fact that pollution-free Ladakh is more suitable for a photovoltaic project than even Rajasthan. The agency is also developing an algorithm to validate the data.

FGS distributed energy solutions on a “progressive purchase” basis; customers make a small initial down payment for a solar energy system and then pre-pay for the service.

About a year ago we wrote about Nokero’s effort to replace kerosene with solar-powered light bulbs in the developing world, and recently we came across a like-minded initiative that takes such goals even further. Based in Bangalore, India, FGS has developed a new pricing model that aims to make household solar energy systems “radically affordable” to the 1.6 billion consumers around the world who currently have no access to electricity.

Simpa Networks is a venture-backed technology company aiming “to make modern energy simple, affordable, and accessible for everyone,” in the company’s own words. Toward that end, it sells distributed energy solutions on a “progressive purchase” basis; customers make a small initial down payment for a high-quality solar photovoltaic system and then pre-pay for the service, topping up their systems in small user-defined increments using a mobile phone. Powered by the Simpa Regulator — a tamper-proof, system-integrated microcontroller and user interface — and cloud-based software, the system ensures that once prepaid consumption is exhausted, the solar home system is temporarily disabled until another payment is made. Each payment, meanwhile, also counts towards the final purchase price. Once fully paid, the system produces clean energy, free and clear for the rest of the system’s expected 10-year useful life.

Now available for customers in Karnataka, India, Simpa Networks’ model is built upon proprietary risk mitigation technology, with investment opportunities for market rate and social investors, it says. Time to help expand clean energy access around the globe?