Cement, Energy and Environment

largest single location solar plant. Two more such joint ventures have been formed by oil companies - one of the upstream companies (ONGC, OIL and GAIL) and another of the downstream (IOC, HPCL and BPCL). The recently-formed PSU, Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), meant to develop solar power in India is a partner in both these ventures, as is the government-owned funding company, IREDA. Most other PSUs are planning or executing solar projects. Neyveli Lignite Corporation has just given the mandate for putting up a 10 MW project at Neyveli to its fellow public sector company, BHEL. NLC, incidentally, wants to put up 300 MW. for which it has sufficient lands in its possession. Companies such as SAIL and Nalco are planning solar forays. Of course, the biggest of them all is NTPC, which already has 50 MW and wants to do more. The fourth bucket is projects being put up by a solar power developer and where the power will be sold to consumers, mostly industrial consumers, at negotiated tariffs the 'captive model'. SunEdison is planning a 18 MW project in Tamil Nadu and is building solar plants in a modular fashion. Industrial consumers could buy electricity from SunEdison , or buy chunks of plants . say two 1 MW plants or three 500 kW plants, or, just buy electricity from SunEdision . So we have four lines of large-scale solar activity running in parallel and by the looks of it, all are likely to succeed. A strong reason why the long-term future of these large-scale plants is secure is the fact that the cost of generation is expected to come down. SunEdison's Pashupathy Gopalan. who heads the company's operations in India, Asia-Pacific, West Asia and Africa , says that cost of modules is coming down and efficiency levels are going up , which, with some policy-driven reduction in capital costs, could see solar proj ects viable at a tariff of ~4 a kWhr by 2016. When prices drop, there is little need for government support. Engineering major L&T, which has built solar projects of over 300 MW for other companies, believes that a solar sector that doesn't depend on government's crutches is j ust around the corner. "With the true cost of solar power accelerating towards grid parity, the open market is going to be the next big revolution where projects would be viable without any financ ial incentive or subsidies," says SN Subrahmanyan, Member of the Board and Senior Executive Vice– President and Head, L&T Construction . Rooftop projects Solar plants on the rooftops of factories and office complexes and shopping malls are happening briskly. There is practically no day without the announcement of a 100 kW or a 150 kW plant commissioned on the roof of a factory or an office or an educational institution. Businesses are attracted to this because of the 'accelerated depreciation' benefit - a tax sop which enables a company to write-off 80 per cent of the cost of the plant as depreciation in the first year while calculating profits for tax purposes. The AD is an attractive benefit because companies put into a solar asset the money they would have otherwise paid to the Income Tax Department. Profit-making companies have been putting up even large-scale plants so as to avail themselves of the AD benefit , but the large plants are being put up mostly by the independent power producers. But commercial rooftops are almost without exception AD-driven . Unattractive option Industrial and commercial rooftops are happening, and wil l happen with even more gusto, even without any further intervention from the government. But when it comes to residential rooftops, the story is not so nice. It is still not attractive for individuals to put up rooftop plants and consume the electricity, though there are arguments in their favour - like 'do you look for return on investment when you buy a car or an air– conditioner'? The emphasis here is on comfort and assurance of power, rather than returns, but this line of thinking has not found much favour from individuals, because the 'comfort' factor is counter– weighted by the fickle nature of electricity generation (unless you have a battery, in which case it becomes very costly), and the hassles of maintenance. Here is where some intervention from the government is required. While businesses get 'AD' benefit for their solar investments, individuals get nothing , which many feel is unfair, because the activity is the same. Mini and micro grids This is the true story of solar in the country. Put up a solar plant in a village, develop a local grid that can carry the solar power to the houses in that village, the result is a 'hey, Presto! ' kind of a thing. The lives of villagers become easy, children study, women work during the pleasant hours of the evenings, and sometimes people get into income– generating activities - the social transformation is huge , as has been seen in the case of Meerwada. 40 • •