JUN 01

Indian newspaper, The Hindu has come across a finalized draft of a national solar power plan that aims to have 200 GW in place by 2050.

The plan outlines expanding the use of small-scale solar PV panels and commercial-scale solar plants in both rural and urban areas and with both commercial and residential customers. Solar lighting and solar water heating will be widely implemented. The plan calls for major growth in centralized solar thermal power generation that would see it becoming competitive in cost to conventional grid power by 2020.

The country only has 3 MW of solar power capacity currently installed. We thought that France's plan to reach 300 MW of solar capacity in the next two years was ambitious, but India's plan blows that (and pretty much every other country's solar plans) out of the water. Plus, India's government only intends to invest around $18-22 million of its own money in the plan, so the country will easily be seeking hundreds of billions of dollars in investments over the course of this project to make it a reality.

The phases of the plan include 20 GW of solar capacity installed by 2020, 100 GW installed by 2030 and then, finally, 200 GW installed by 2050.

As overwhelming as plans like these seem at the onset, I love seeing countries take on such large-scale initiatives. We've heard consistently that the only solution to climate change is a drastic change in infrastructure around the world, so this plan from India is right on track.

via Treehugger

Comments (19)

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Only one thing to say...
written by Zara, June 01, 2009

Go India!!!!!

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Makes a lot of sense
written by Jacob, June 02, 2009

Indians in even the most developed cities routinely experience brownouts, and most houses have a backup generator. Honestly, I've always wondered at the lack of PV. Maybe it gets lifted in the night?
Truth be told, In the north at least I would think that CSP would be the better option, since it can be tacked onto existing plants to deal with peak load at noon.

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...
written by enicao, June 02, 2009

that's just empty words if it's not backed by a serious budget.

I personnaly plan to build a 500 GW solar plant by 2050, and I will spend about 100$ on it

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Great news
written by Edouard Stenger, France., June 02, 2009

These are fantastic news. Many many thanks for bringing them !

If these plans are enacted it will draw a loot of attention from companies around the world and spur many local others to work on this project.

I previously noted that regarding clean tech we are in an arms race situation, where each country wants to do more than their competitors or neighbors. This seems quite right with your article.

However I don't agree on your note on how France planning to have a tiny 300 MW by 2011 is great. Spain built 3 GW in 2008 only.

(But well, France got a lot of GHG free electricity with nuclear...)

Keep up the good work !

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written by glenn, June 02, 2009

Power to the (Indian) people!

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written by TI2009, June 03, 2009

The article states that the Gov't plans on investing 105,000 Crore or $21 Billion USD over the next 30 years ... typo reads *M*illion.

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Solar Power
written by Solar Power, June 03, 2009

Also the Australian government is contributing to the environment by stimulating residential house owners to get solar by giving them an 8000 dollar rebate.

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written by hyperspaced, June 04, 2009

Is 200GW alot? By the end of 2050 there will be more than 1.5 billion Indians...

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Concentrating solar in India
written by Andy Simpson, June 04, 2009

They have a production lines for the SunCube concentrating PV technology churning out gear for PV farms already - IIRC they were the first country to get a plant up and running.

See http://www.greenandgoldenergy.com.au/ for some pics.

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...
written by enicao, June 04, 2009

to "solar power"
the australian solar PV rebate program ends in less than a month. the new system is going to kill a lot of solar panel companies, and is very bad news for all renewable energy (wind, solar PV, solar thermal, waves...)
maybe ecogeek could make a post on that.

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Solar Engineer
written by Steve in ATL, June 11, 2009

And here in Georgia, GA Power has just cut off their customers from tying solar via their Renewable Tariff at 17.7 cents/kWH. They want us to choke on coal dust until their bank accounts overflow. Southern US states are destined to become a third-world nation is we don't break the legislative/PUC logjam and force change.

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...
written by Fred, July 02, 2009

Its refreshing to see going green is global

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FRAUD
written by KEEFWIVANEF, July 08, 2009

The SUNCUBE is a fraud.
Greg Watson, CEO of Green and Gold Energy is a con man.
This is just another PONZI scheme.
Square Engineering have been conned by Greg Watson.
What they will do now is to try and finf suckers to become distributors and also sell shares in "Suncube solar farms" which will NEVER be built.

The USA company Emcore which supplies the photocells is the subject of a class action which alleges that the claimed multimillion dollar orders placed by Watson are a total fraud.
Use your google
Google "suncube fraud"

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This is good news
written by Install Solar panels, September 03, 2010

It is truly important that governments of super power countries take the lead with regards to producing energy from renewable sources.

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written by smith solar power, December 21, 2010

Its a good news. people should know about this changing climate.

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solar power brisbane
written by solar power brisbane, April 16, 2011

governments need to realise that after peak oil the push for renewables will be even greater

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Solar Pnels in India
written by peter solar panels, July 01, 2011

Well i am very happy to know that my country is looking into future are are starting to save our resources.
Everyone should know about this changing climate.

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Solar panels in India, Germany, Australia, and the world
written by Solar Power James, July 29, 2011

India may eventually lead the way for PV--they're already well ahead of much of the world, up there at about 15% renewables, about the same as what China has. Fossil fuel dependence will of course not do the developed nations well in a future resource-constrained world.

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Shame the UK is so lagging behind
written by Laser ye Surgery Riaks, February 10, 2012

Oneof the problems with a developed infrastructure is how difficult is to swop technologies.

Here in the UK we adopted Nuclear early, We leaders in Wave and helped develop the early wind turbine tech (we still do all those things) but changing over to local service such as this are still a problem as the burden of cost comes on teh home owner and with 10-12 year pay back its hard to justify.

Now if the planners would let me put a 1.2MW trubine on my farm.. ah well then that would make sense

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