ONLY 8 MW WITH TRACKERS, BUT…
Indian developers, it seems, are not great fans of tracker systems. Today, India has around 800 MW of solar PV capacity, while less than 8 MW are with trackers. Ask why they don't use trackers, and the answers are invariably the same: too many moving parts and therefore a maintenance headache, benefits do not justify the costs, and risk of failure of one tracker affecting performance of whole system.
According to Mr Ganapathy Murugesh, all these are unfounded and pretty soon, use of tracker in solar PV will become the norm rather than the exception. Mr Murugesh works for Infinite Ercam, a joint venture of Infinite Energy of the US and Energica Ercam of Spain, which produces tracker systems. This joint venture has high hopes for trackers in India. Mr Murugesh says the developers have got it all wrong about trackers. Don't worry about maintenance, we will guarantee you uptime, provided, of course, you give us the maintenance job too, he says. According to his calculations, if you assume 1 MW solar system costs Rs 10 crore, one with a single-axis tracker will cost Rs 11 crore and a dual-axis tracker, Rs 11.5 crore. The single-axis tracker will enhance generation by 23 per cent and the dual-axis by 33 per cent.
Infinite Ercam has installed trackers in two plants in India, BAP in Rajasthan and Mayiladuthurai in Tamil Nadu. The projected generation for fixed, single-axis and dual-axis systems are 1.66 mu, 1.92 mu and 2.08 mu for BAP, and 1.51 mu, 1.84 mu and 1.87 mu for Mayiladuthurai.
As tariffs go down, developers will discover the indispensibility of trackers, says Mr Murugesh, and that is why Infinity Ercam is bullish about its business in India.
3,000 MW WILL BE UNDER FIT IN PHASE II
The Phase II of the National Solar Mission, which will be executed between 2013 and 2017, will see the installation of 9,000 MW of solar projects, of which 3,000 MW will be under Feed in Tariff, says Mr Anil Lakhani, Chairman and Managing Director, Forum for Advancement of Solar Thermal (FAST).
That's all very good, but where is the money to pay, wonders Mr Lakhani. The Phase I was easy because NVVN was able to bundle the unallocated power with the costlier solar power and the resultant burden on the electricity distribution companies was just a few paise a unit, but there is no more unallocated power to bundle with now. That model not being there, how is the feed-in-tariff going to be paid? Nobody trusts the PPAs of discoms anyway, and consequently, no project would be bankable. “How will the Central and State governments force utilities to buy expensive power, is an important issue unresolved as yet,” says Mr Lakhina.
Apart from FiT, 3,000 MW will cost around Rs 20,000 crore, and the debt portion of it comes to Rs 14,000 crore. Mr Lakhina estimates that for the 9,000 MW programme, the funding required would be of the order of Rs 50,000 crore. “Mobilising funds of this order for nascent technologies is the biggest policy challenge,” Mr Lakhina, a former Chairman and Managing Director of the Rural Electrification Corporation, says. He suggests a “solar-specific fund” be carved out of the National Clean Energy Fund for this purpose.
EAI TO HOLD REACTION 2012 IN CHENNAI
Energy Alternatives India, a renewable energy consultancy, will hold a conference on the ‘emerging and future trends in renewable energy' in Chennai. Considering that it was only in March that another conference on renewable energy (“Renergy 2012”) was held in Chennai, this might look like a ‘ conference overkill', but Mr Narasimhan Santhanam, Director, EAI says that REaction 2012 is a conference with a difference. He says that this conference will be “the first renewable energy meet to have a unique focus on interactivity” among the participants.
The distinguishing feature of REaction 2012 is to provide an online platform, REaction Online, where delegates can identify prospects for business and interact before the event, so that at the event, they can interact better, rather than spend time merely networking.
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