Solar Power To Form 25% Of India’s Installed Power Capacity By 2022, Deutsche Bank Forecasts
A recently announced capacity addition target could make India one of the largest solar power markets in the world.
The Indian government formally confirmed the solar power capacity addition target for 2022 as 100 GW. The current installed solar power capacity stands at around 3 GW, or about a tenth of the total renewable energy capacity, and just over 1% of the total power capacity of the country.
As per the current plans and targets of the government, about 400 GW power generation capacity is expected to be operational in 2022, with 100 GW based on solar power.
The forecast has been made in a report published by Deutsche Bank, which suggests that the falling cost of generating solar power would help India achieve this very ambitious target.
Solar PV power feed-in tariffs have fallen to a third of what they were 5-6 years ago when the National Solar Mission was launched. The new government has divided the capacity addition targets among various stakeholders. Large-scale capacity will be auctioned to private project developers while state-owned entities have been asked to develop large solar power parks.
The central government has already identified about 2 dozen states where ultra mega solar power projects of capacity between 500 MW and 4 GW would be established. In addition to this, state governments will auction off several 100 megawatts independent of the central government auctions. The central government is expected to kick-off a long and sustained phase of solar power project auctions soon.
With a targeted installed solar power capacity of 100 GW by 2022 India will have to add 12 GW capacity every year.
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What are the plans of USA to meet targets like India does.
India is number 1, the more installed, the more money made.
As always with such impressive targets, the question is: can they do it? The costs are feasible already, we know. India has tens of thousands of qualified engineers, and unlimited cheap unskilled labour. What can go wrong? The government’s obsession with state-built ultramega projects is a bad sign of Permit Raj thinking. Another problem is the rickety grid, with AFAICT no plan announced for the thorough reform it needs. And where is the plan for efficiency gains? Don’t tell me those millions of irrigation pumps are at the state of the art.
That’s a hopeful sign. According to Wikipedia, India had 258.701 GW capacity as of ‘end January 2015’. With a proposed 400 GW total capacity and 100 GW of solar, that doesn’t leave room for 100s of coal plants that are supposedly being built.
Let’s hope they get active on wind and geothermal too. I’d like to see ‘peak coal’ from India ASAP.
With China seemingly peaking out the pressure on India to follow suit will increase. India won’t like being the “big problem”.