sankar&surel_final_paper_tem 492

1 | Solar for India, a report analyzing the future growth of solar power in India

SOLAR POWER FOR INDIA

By-

Sankaranarayanan Subramanian

Surel Surve

TABLE OF CONTENTSBackground and Motivation…………………………….……………………………………..........................3Scope…………....……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….3Literature Review…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..4Solar For India- An Overview……………………………….………………………………………………………….6Model in detail.………………………………………………………………………………………………………………6

Grid Parity…………………......……………………………….……………………………………………………….6 Carbon Tax……………………….………………………………………………………………………………………9 Payback Period……………………………………………………………………………………………………….10 GDP………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..………11 New & Installed Capacity…………………………………………………………………………………………

12 Bass Diffusion Model………………………………………………………………………………………………14

Sensitivity Analysis…………….…………………………………………………………………………………………15Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………16

Abbreviations……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….16References……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………17

List of Figures and Tables

Fig.1) Breakdown of global CO2 emissions from coal/peat through the production of electricity, heat & power generation capacity……………………..…………………….………………4

Fig. 2) Comparison of all the different types of energy costs from different sources………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..…..9

Fig. 3) Trend of increase in LCOE from coal………………………………………………………………10

Fig. 4) Comparison in % share of Coal, Solar and other types of power plants……………………………………………………………………………………………………….………….…14

Fig. 5) The S-shaped market adoption curve for solar power generation technologies……………………………………………………………………………………………………..…...15

Table 1) Comparison of payback of standalone and grid connected systems in years ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….11

BACKGROUND & MOTIVATION


Access to electricity and other modern energy sources is a necessary requirement for the economic and social development of any country. Energy is an integral part of an economy to grow and sustain. It can be associated directly with the well-being of the people. Providing affordable and clean energy to all the people in a country is a challenge. Solving this challenge gives way to prosperity, making the economy boom, creating job opportunities and enhancing quality of life of the people and the standard of living.

India is the third largest economy by purchasing power parity1 (World Bank ranking), is the second most populated country in the world, a fast growing economy with hunger for energy rising dramatically over the years. This is mainly due to an increasing population, especially the middle income groups. With the government’s pledge to provide electricity for all (currently 75% have access to electricity2) and to support the energy demand to maintain economic growth, efforts are taken in a large scale by the Government of India (GOI). There is a long way to go to improve energy situation in the country with a shortage of around 10% between supply and peak demand and is increasing. Changes need to be done in terms of policy, generation capacity increase, and improve energy efficiency in an affordable manner to achieve and sustain high economic growth.

In addition to catering to energy needs, India is required to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions to reduce spending in health care and also in order to position itself better among the countries in United Nations to have better negotiating power in the International climate change arena. In order to achieve this, this is right time for Indian government to push for reforms in energy sector and find cheaper and non-polluting sources, which leads to interest in renewable energy generation sources.

GOI is now keen on exploring opportunities in alternative energy to reduce greenhouse gases and catering to demand. While countries such as China and United States have ambitious targets to reduce greenhouse gases, India is doing its part well in terms of reducing energy intensity and measures to reduce pollution.

SCOPE

With coal prices soaring high, major countries are looking for alternative and cheap fuel for energy generation and solar energy has been one answer for many questions. With the price of solar power declining rapidly with technological advancement and improved efficiency, Solar is going to dominate the energy arena for at least a couple of decades.

India being a tropical country, the daily average solar energy incident over India varies from 4 to 7 kW h/m2 with the sunshine hours ranging between 2300 and 3200 per year [3], depending upon location. With this potential for generating large amount of clean and green energy, this model tries to identify a trend in which the conversion can happen from coal based generation to other sources especially solar and also the percent share it can hold based on the current trends in policies and condition prevailing around the world.


In addition, it analyses the current trends in the prices of different solar energy systems and compares it with the cost of coal power generation in India and approximates the year when grid parity (GP) can be achieved or the cost of energy from solar is on par with that from coal.

However, till today solar power potential has not been exploited to the fullest, mainly due to high capital expenditure cost involved in installation of Solar Photovoltaic (PV) or Solar thermal systems. In the current times, apart from the government entities, several private and corporate firms have started showing interest in solar power not only as part of their social responsibility, but also because of the promising future they see for green energy sources. Due to technical potential of 5,000 trillion kWh per year & minimum operating cost, Solar Power is considered the best suited energy source for India [4] and also helping in reducing emissions.

FIG. 1) Breakdown of global CO2 emissions from coal/peat through the production of electricity, heat & power generation capacity

LITERATURE REVIEW

The reason for solar power not being utilized in India widely so far can be attributed to high Capital investment requirement. But due to improvement in efficiency and increase in adoption worldwide, the costs are coming down rapidly. With the time required for construction and commissioning being very less than conventional power plants, it is highly sought after with the conditions being favorable and an immediate requirement to increase capacity. The assumptions and calculations in the report are based on the policies, estimation and projections made by the Government of India (GOI), taking into account the data from various sources including the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), data from World Bank and various Indian authorities including Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), Central Electrification Authority (CEA), Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) etc.,

Some of the policies taken for review include the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM), Desert Power India 2050 and recent developments in this relation including the decisions, taxes, tax exemptions and efforts made by the GOI.


The objective of the National Solar Mission is to establish India as a global leader in solar energy, by creating the policy conditions for its diffusion across the country as quickly as possible. One of the main targets is to create an enabling policy framework for the deployment of 20,000 MW of solar power by 2022 [5]. Besides, the mission anticipates to achieve grid parity by 2022 and parity with coal-based thermal power by 2030. Most recently, the government has announced its ambitious plan to increase target from 20 GW to 100GW of solar by 2022 (Deustche Bank - Crossing the Chasm-2015 [6]). With the Indian government being hopeful and highly ambitious about the rate of adoption and installation of Solar Power, analysis needs to be made as to how feasible it would be to achieve this target based on the current scenario.

Currently the installed capacity for Solar is around 3.3 GW [7]. To aid in increasing the adoption of and availability of solar components in the market, GOI has dropped the plan to impose anti-dumping [8] duty suggested by the Department of Trade and Commerce to prevent domestic manufacturers. It is clear that the government wants to increase the rate of adoption of solar power to bring down cost and boost interest among industries to promote domestic manufacturing.

Because of the recent interests from private players like SunEdison and FirstSolar coupled with talk of further cooperation with the US government and local policy announcements as mentioned above, support our view that India is beginning to ramp solar installations and could become one of the leading markets in the world. Recently, India’s Power Minister suggested that a rule may be implemented where the addition of new coal plants would require the simultaneous investment in renewable capacity equal to ~5% of the traditional capacity [6] showing the interest of the people in power to bring a positive change. On the other hand, in just four years, India has seen imports of thermal coal double from 54Mt or 10% of India’s total consumption in 2009/10 to over 20% share in 2013/14, resulting in a US$12bn annual import bill. Based on the Coal Ministry’s current forecast, coal imports could double again to approach US$24bn by 2016/17 (say US$80-100/t @ 200-240mtpa) [9]

This increase in dependence on coal and rapid installation of new coal power plants to the tune of 500 GW [10] is viewed as a strategy similar to that implemented by China in the 90’s where energy available from cheap coal gave access to electricity for most of the citizens leading to increase in prosperity, standard of living and boosted economy especially in the manufacturing sector. Though this appears to be a proven model for development, there are various constraints to be taken care. This is not only limited to but also includes increase in pollution levels, health risks for people living around the generation plants, resistance from developed countries to reduce emission of Greenhouse gases causing global warming and in an major level, the availability of cheap coal. Though India is gifted with a high amount of coal resources, the ash content is very high [11] leading to low calorific value and more coal required to produce power, causing high levels of pollution. As a result import of coal with higher ash content at a higher cost is to be done from countries mainly like Australia, Indonesia and South Africa. With the dwindling availability of resources the cost of coal imported increasing and problems in mobilizing locally available coal due to land acquisition and mining problems, has resulted in a deficit of fuel and most coal plants do not run on full capacity due this non-availability of coal on time.


Based on the current stand of the federal government, both coal power plants and solar power plants will be increasing. This is evident from the “DESERT POWER INDIA – 2050 [12]” where it is estimated that the utilization of coal plants will be three time the current availability and the renewable energy is to increase manifold from a very minimum contribution at present which includes solar, wind, small hydro.

If projections by IEA [13] are to be considered possible then before 2025, India overtakes China, to become the world’s largest importer of coal and somewhere in this decade leaves behind USA to claim spot two before rising to the 1st. By the end of the 2040, India is the destination for 30% of all the coal traded inter-regionally and its import dependency increases from 25% in 2012 to nearly 40% by 2040. Naturally, more the coal burnt, more the CO2 emissions ultimately resulting in much more pollution. Not to mention the negative effect on the nations GDP with ever increasing imports.

SOLAR FOR INDIA-AN OVERVIEW

The report analyses the above mentioned facts and scenarios of the energy demand and growth in the following order.

One of the most primary aims of our model is to identify the year in which grid parity for different solar energy sources can be achieved (such as utility scale solar pv plant, rooftop plant and solar thermal) by calculating the levelized cost of energy (LCOE). Also the payback time for different sources are calculated.

Followed by this is the sensitivity analysis of GDP and Energy intensity to find the energy demand/consumption over the years assuming different cases of economic growth rates using the GDP and energy data collected from World Bank [14]

Then an estimation of the mix of coal powered plants, solar and other sources are estimated based on the “Desert Power India – 2015” plan.

Finally a bass diffusion model for adapting solar power is calculated based on the percentage share from the previous estimation.

MODEL IN DETAIL

The model is analyzed in detail below with the calculations done in the accompanies excel sheet.

I. GRID PARITY

Grid Parity between two sources is achieved when the cost of generating electricity from both the sources are same. Since coal is one of the cheapest sources of electricity generation, we start our analysis with the time required for solar energy generation to achieve grid parity with coal plants. This is measured using LCOE, which is a convenient summary measure of the overall competiveness of different generating technologies. It represents the per-kilowatt-hour cost (in


real dollars) of building and operating a generating plant over an assumed financial life and duty cycle.

Key inputs to calculating LCOE include capital costs, fuel costs, fixed and variable operations and maintenance (O&M) costs, financing costs, and an assumed utilization rate for each plant type. The importance of the factors varies among the technologies. The availability of various incentives, including state or federal tax credits, also impacts the calculation of LCOE. As with any projection, there is uncertainty about all of these factors and their values can vary regionally and across time as technologies evolve and fuel prices change.

LCOE [15] = {(overnight capital cost * capital recovery factor + fixed O&M cost)/ (8760 * capacity factor)} + (fuel cost * heat rate) + variable O&M cost.Where,

Overnight capital cost ($/kW) is the cost of building a power plant overnight. The term is useful to compare the economic feasibility of building various plants.

Capital recovery factor is the ratio of a constant annuity to the present value of receiving that annuity for a given length of time. The value that is chosen for the discount rate i can often 'weight' the decision towards one option or another, so the basis for choosing the discount must clearly be carefully evaluated.

Fixed Operation and Maintenance (O&M) costs ($/kW-year) Variable O&M costs ($/kWh). 8760=(24*365), number of hours in a year Capacity factor is the ratio of the annual energy that the system produces to the amount

of energy it would produce if it operated at full nameplate capacity for the whole year. Fuel cost ($/MMBtu) is the price of the fuel burnt in order to generate one unit of

electricity. Heat rate (Btu/kWh) is the amount of fuel burned for each unit of electricity produced.

NOTE: The LCOE is the minimum price at which energy must be sold for an energy project to break even.

The following assumptions have been made for our analysis,

Fixed O&M costs- For Thermal Power Plants, Fixed O&M costs are assumed to be 2% of the capital costs per annum. For Solar modules, Fixed O&M is 2% of Capital cost for Solar Rooftops and 1.5% of total capital costs for Solar PV & Solar Thermal installations according to MNRE India.

Variable O&M costs- For Coal powered electricity generation plants, Variable costs are assumed to be 0.1% of the total capital cost of the power plant each year. Since Solar power electricity generation doesn’t have fuel costs, variable costs are almost nil & thus can be neglected safely.

Capacity Factor- Coal powered power plants being pretty efficient, CF is considered as 0.85. Capacity Factors vary from module to module when it comes to solar due to


http://value/

about:blank

different applications and scales of use. Data used for solar calculation is picked up from MNRE India website.

Overnight Capital Cost- We have averaged capital costs for coal power plants that we received from multiple sources to reach to the number of $30005. Solar PV installation costs are picked from MNRE and are clearly quite higher than Coal power plants currently.

Interest on working capital- Coal power generation is cheaper & hence lucrative due to low interest rate on capital. We have assumed it as 10% by taking the most common value seen across multiple sources. Interest rates for solar modules differ from installation to installation and the respective interest rates are picked from MNRE India.

Lifetime- For a fair comparison, we have assumed the lifetime of both the competitors to be 25 years whereas in reality Coal Power Plants have a much longer lifetime ranging from 30 to 60 years according to NREL while Solar PV modules fall in the 20-25 years range. We still found a source cercind.gov.in that states coal power plant lifetime as 25 years.

CRF is calculated as per the formula mentioned above for both types of power plants. Fuel Costs- Since no fuel is involved in generation of electricity using Solar PV, fuel

costs here are zero. For Coal, tit is $1.99 /MMBtu [16]

Heat rate- Solar PV & Solar Thermal do not use any fuels and hence have no heat rate of fuel involved in their LCOE calculations. Heat rate of coal is considered to be 10.415 Btu/kWh [17]

The calculations for the LCOE each year are made using the above assumed & researched values. A comparison is made by plotting all the LCOE values of all the competing electricity sources for each year.

Based on the graph below we see that grid parity achievement for solar in India won’t take too many years. This is supposed to happen in a couple of year and can vary a little by changes in the scenario but it is bound to happen quickly.


2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 2027 2028 2029 2030 2031 2032$0.000

$0.050

$0.100

$0.150

$0.200

$0.250

$0.300

$0.350

$0.400

Comparing the future trend of energy cost in India

Coal Solar PV (MW Scale) Solar ThermalSolar PV Rooftop Solar PV Rooftop with subsidy

Year

$/ K

Wh

FIG. 2) Comparison of all the different types of energy costs from different sources.

We see that ideally two solar technologies viz. Solar PV (MW Scale) & Solar PV Rooftop with subsidy, are already competitive with the conventional coal generated electricity.

II. CARBON TAX

The GOI in a frantic attempt to discourage rising coal usage, keeps on increasing the carbon tax per metric ton of coal occasionally every few years. This raises the LCOE of Coal generated electricity by directly increasing the fuel cost.

For simplicity of calculations, we have considered fuel cost devoid carbon tax for LCOE calculations, but here in order to determine the LCOE including Carbon Tax costs, we need to find Carbon Tax inclusive fuel costs. Carbon Tax in India currently being $3.21 per metric ton of coal was raised in 2014 from $1.64 per metric ton of coal. Thus, it’s logically sound to assume that the fuel cost in 2015 is inclusive of the carbon tax of $1.64 active till 2014(previous year).


Hence the effective carbon tax affecting the fuel costs will only be the difference between the updated and old carbon tax, i.e. $3.21-$1.64=$1.57 per metric ton of coal.

Coal burnt for single unit power generation (1 kWh) can be calculated by measuring the heat content and arriving at a quantity required. But based on a Harvard study [18], we assume 0.77 Kg (0.00077 ton) coal is burned to produce one unit of electricity. Using this we determine carbon tax effective for producing one unit of electricity which turns out to be $0.0011468850 which when added to the fuel cost needed for producing 1 kWh of electricity amounts to a net fuel cost of $0.0079387550/kWh.

LCOE of Coal powered electricity is once again calculated using the new carbon tax inclusive fuel cost. Result shows that electricity is 0.73₡/kwh costlier with the new carbon tax. Since the carbon tax levied may increase in the future owing to the step towards a green economy, the cost of power from coal is bound to increase further.

Based on the assumptions made, the trend in increase in LCOE from coal is as below.

FIG. 3) Trend of increase in LCOE from coal

III. PAYBACK PERIOD

Payback period refers to the period of time required to recoup the funds invested in a project, or to reach the break-even point.


For a standalone solar PV system, payback period is usually calculated by using the ratio of total units of electricity it generates over the lifetime to the cost of the installation and maintenance of the overall system. Based on the data from MNRE, the capacity factor CF), capital recovery factor CRF) and installation cost are assumed.

From this assumption,

Payback time for standalone system in years = Capital cost / (CF * 24 * 365 * CRF)

But for a grid connected system, the payback time is calculated by comparing the units of electricity generated over lifetime by the solar PV system to the cost the system would save by not using the coal power. This calculation is affected by increase in price of coal every year since more the increase in price of coal, more the savings is from the PV system leading to a reduced payback time.

From this assumption,

We calculate

1) Saving every year, cumulative savings (CS) over the years. If the CS is more than the installation cost, payback is achieved in that year.

2) To calculate the exact month:

If we assume that the payback occurs in 5 th year, we calculate months using the below formula.

(Total investment – CS till 4th year) / Savings in the 5th year

Based on the above method of calculation, we get the below payback period for various soalr PV systems assuming the other factors as described above.

Type Payback –standalone (years) Payback – Grid connected (years)

Solar PV (MW Scale) 6.89 4.72Solar Thermal 6.89 5.64Solar Rooftop 6.58 4.3Solar Rooftop W/Subsidy 6.58 2.85

Table 1: Comparison of payback of standalone and grid connected systems in years

Thus, the payback time for different PV systems is within 5 years with the other assumptions about price in place, making it an effective source to invest in.

IV. GDP

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the monetary value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country's borders in a specific time period. With the import of coal for electricity generation increasing every year due to scarcity in domestic coal in India, it affects a


portion of GDP and the constraints in access to electricity for manufacturing affects the GDP in an indirect way. GDP is related do the energy demand in a way that economic growth leads energy consumption positively [19] for developing nations with the assumption that India is in the middle income group.

Since the trends in energy intensity for India going down on an average three scenarios are analyzed.

1. Best case scenario – where the GDP growth is assumed to be on an average of 5 % which is close to the recent trends in average growth. With the economic growth being in the expected range, the energy intensity is assumed to be reducing in an expected way of around 1.95% every year which is the 5 year average energy intensity change in India.

2. High economic growth case – where the economic growth is high (around 8 % ) and the demand for energy is pretty high so that the energy efficiency improvement is not so high, leading to a slow decrease in energy efficiency compared to the previous case. The change is selected to be a decrease of around 1.70 %, selected based on the pledge of Indian government in the Copenhagen climate conference in 2010 that the GDP emissions intensity will be reduced by 20-25 % by 2020 compared to 2005 levels. This result in around 1.70% reduction every year.

3. Low economic growth – where the GDP growth is low (around 2%) so that the energy demand does not increase much leading to the effects in improving energy efficiency helps reducing the energy intensity considerably around 2.27% every year which is the 1o year average change in energy intensity in India. Coal rents are the difference between the value of both hard and soft coal production at world prices and their total costs of production. In 2013, these coal rents accounted for 1% of the GDP.2 Simplifying it further, if we consider the basic relation of EXPORTS-IMPORTS=GDP, If the coal imports go down due to gradual increase in adoption of Solar Power, the GDP will be boosted significantly.

In general, it may be appearing that the GDP growth can be aided by moving away from coal power thus leading to reduced import of coal. But the underlying problem in this aspect is that the current production of solar components in the domestic manufacturing sector being very low in spite of a high demand, most of the quantity of the components is to be imported which nullifies the effect of switching from coal thus reducing coal imports in short term. This claim is supported by the recent move by the government to not to implement anti-dumping duty [8]

against imported solar components from US, China, Chinese Taipei and Malaysia, thus paving way for or not stopping an increase in import of the components. Though this is true for short term calculations, this is going to help in long term energy sustainability.

V. NEW & TOTAL INSTALLED CAPACITY

It is clear from the data [7] available for the total and new installed capacity that there has been a great rise in capacity of electricity generation over the last few years in India. From the data, it is clear that coal power occupies a predominant share of around 60% and the share of Solar being a


meagre 1.3%. But the trend also explains that the Solar installed capacity has increased exponentially in the last few years from almost a near zero level.

With the phase II of the JNNSM being implemented, the installed capacity of solar is going to increase vastly as the government is working on the new ambitious target of 100GW of solar by 2022 [6]. But on the other hand, as explained earlier about the plan for rising the economy of people by utilizing the not so efficient, highly polluting, but cheap coal power, there are large scale expansions in table to the tune of 500 GW [20]. Thus a mix of solar and coal power are going to light the Indian homes and run the machines in Indian industries. Keeping this in mind, a study of the growth of these power sources and their share in total capacity is done.

Assumptions made in this analysis are as follows

1. Since there is an expansion of about 500 GW of coal and 100 GW of solar, we assume that this is happening over a period of 10 years (considering the delay in getting clearances and problems in commissioning the plant which usually takes around 5 to 7 years for a coal plant) and thus 50GW coal power capacity and 10GW solar capacity are being added for 10 years (Though the target for solar PV as per GOI is 100 GW by 2022, we assume a delay of 3 years attributed to the dependence on land acquisition, availability of components etc.). Also it is to be noted that other sources of energy such as wind (showing constant growth of about 7% in India over a long time), Nuclear, Biomass and Hydro and small Hydro power sources are also being utilized. So it is assumed that every year other sources increase by 1% of the installed capacity for 10 years.

2. For the next 10 years (from 2026 to 2035), it is assumed that the new installed capacity of coal is decreasing by 10% by considering the following factors contributing to that.

a. Availability of Coal reduces due to problems in miningb. Cost of imported coal rises c. Government is required to control pollution levels d. Efficiency of coal plants increase due to regulatory measurese. Solar becomes more profitable that Coal plant attracts no investments

At the same time it is assumed that the new installed capacity of solar power remains constant at 10 GW per year for 10 years by cons considering the following factors contributing to that.

A. Cost effective due to increased efficiency and low installation costB. Improved storage efficiencyC. Breakthrough in battery technologyD. Coal power is very costly compared to solar power

3. For the next 15 years (2036 – 2050), it is assumed that no new coal plants are opened, solar is increasing at the same rate of 10GW per year and other sources are increasing at 2% of installed capacity.Based on these assumptions, by 2050 the generation share of coal will be around 40% solar will be around 16.31 and other sources being 43%. This coincides with the projection made by the Power Grid Corporation of India (PGCI) in their “Desert Power India -2050” [12] plan. According to that projection, the share of coal power will be 32%, Solar will be 27% and other being 40%.


Fig. 4) Comparison in % share of Coal, Solar and other types of power plants

VI. BASS DIFFUSION MODEL

The Bass Diffusion Model consists of a simple differential equation that describes the process of how new products/services are adopted among the masses. The model presents a rationale of how current adopters and potential adopters of a new product/service interact and influence each other. The basic premise of the model is that adopters can be classified as innovators or as imitators and the speed and timing of adoption depends on their degree of innovativeness and the degree of imitation among adopters.

The following factors are assumed in calculation this diffusion model.

Innovation rate, P = 0.0005

Imitation rate, Q = 0.69

Maximum percentage = 20 % market share (which is slightly greater than calculated in the capacity expansion explained in the previous section).

Formula for predicting the increase in diffusion

[ P + Q * (cumulative share in previous year) ]

= ______________________________________________

(Max % * 100) * (Max % * 100 – share in previous year)]

Using this formula and the above assumptions, the s-curve of the diffusion model is obtained as below.


Fig. 15) The S- shaped market adoption curve for solar power generation technologies.

SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS

The sensitivity analysis of the report can be done on the below aspects.

The impact on LCOE of Coal power and solar PV power can be studied by changing the factors taken into consideration including

o Increase in capital cost every yearo Increase in fuel costo Capital recovery factor

We have taken into the consideration the changes that can be made to the above factors and in our excel model, we have Spin button to control the variation and study the effect on LCOE by varying these factors.

Economic growth and energy intensity are varied in a controlled manner to obtain the energy demand because of these factors.

Total and New installed capacity share are estimated by projecting the increase in the new capacity every which can be varied to see the changes in the data and the corresponding graph.


CONCLUSION

Based on the facts and assumptions mentioned above, we conclude that India is desperate to provide access to electricity to all its citizens and to meet the demand of industries. In this view, it is expanding both conventional (coal) and renewable generation capabilities.

But in spite of this trend, the estimates show that still it will depend on coal power heavily which can have multiple effects ranging from high cost of energy due to scarcity of coal, decline in growth due to power scarcity to health impacts due to pollution. So, this is the right time to divest its interest in other avenues like reducing transmission and distribution losses (of around 23 % [21]) theft of electricity by industries in terms of infrastructure. On the other side, it is on the right path to increase the penetration of solar power in electricity generation. It can invest more in infrastructure, manufacturing sector, R&D of renewable sources including solar PV and wind in order to boost domestic interest in manufacturing parts thus leading to a high growth economy, improved standard of living and job opportunities.

Other ways to expand this research is to analyze the impact on environment and health of people in a detailed manner and the dependency on water for these generation sources as water is going to be a scarce resource in the future.

ABBREVIATIONS

GOI – Government of India

GP – Grid Parity

PV – Photovoltaic

Kw h – Kilowatt hour

JNNSM - Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission

MNRE – Ministry of New and Renewable Energy

MW – Megawatt

GW – Gigawatt

LCOE – Levelized cost of energy

BTU – British thermal unit

MMBTU or MBTU – Million BTU


REFERENCES1. GDP_PPP ranking http://databank.worldbank.org/data/download/GDP_PPP.pdf2. Access to electricity (% of population) http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.ACCS.ZS3. Muneer, T.; Asif, M.; Munawwar, S. (2005). "Sustainable production of solar electricity with particular

reference to the Indian economy"4. Future of Indian Solar PV Industry, Published: 25 Jan 2010,by Lakshman Rao R Sutrave, Senior Research

Analyst Energy and Power Systems South Asia and Middle East.5. http://www.mnre.gov.in/file-manager/UserFiles/mission_document_JNNSM.pdf 6. Deustche bank – crossing the chasm 2015 https://www.db.com/cr/en/docs/solar_report_full_length.pdf7. Central Electrification Authority http://www.cea.nic.in/installed_capacity.html8. http://www.wsj.com/articles/india-drops-plan-to-impose-antidumping-tariffs-on-solar-cells-14089796609. http://www.ieefa.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/IEEFA-Briefing-Note_IndianElectricityCoalPricing_4-

May-2014.pdf10. http://www.wri.org/sites/default/files/pdf/global_coal_risk_assessment.pdf11. Assessment of the effect of high ash content in pulverized coal combustion, S. Jayanti, K. Maheswaran, V.

Saravanan. doi:10.1016/j.apm.2006.03.022

12. Desert Power India 2050 –An action plan by the Power Grid corporation of India

https://www.powergridindia.com/_layouts/PowerGrid/ WriteReadData /file/ourBusiness/SmartGrid/

desert_power_india.pdf13. World Energy Outlook 2014- https://www.iea.org/Textbase/npsum/WEO2014SUM.pdf

14. World Bank GDP data (Current US $) http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD

15. LCOE calculation formula from NREL http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/tech_lcoe_documentation.html

16. Cost of Coal per MMBTU (http://www.lazard.com/PDF/Levelized%20Cost%20of%20Energy%20-

%20Version%208.0.pdf)

17. Heat rate for coal – suggested by EIA - http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/showtext.cfm?

t=ptb1206#http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/showtext.cfm?t=ptb1206

18. Harvard study on amount of coal required to produce one unit of electricity in India

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/m-rcbg/rpp/RFF-DP-12-25.pdf

19. Causal relationship between energy consumption and GDP growth revisited: A dynamic panel data

approach

20. http://www.wri.org/sites/default/files/pdf/global_coal_risk_assessment.pdf

21. Transmission and Distribution losses http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.LOSS.ZS


http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.LOSS.ZS

http://www.wri.org/sites/default/files/pdf/global_coal_risk_assessment.pdf

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/m-rcbg/rpp/RFF-DP-12-25.pdf

http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/showtext.cfm?t=ptb1206#http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/showtext.cfm?t=ptb1206

http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/showtext.cfm?t=ptb1206#http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/showtext.cfm?t=ptb1206

http://www.lazard.com/PDF/Levelized%20Cost%20of%20Energy%20-%20Version%208.0.pdf

http://www.lazard.com/PDF/Levelized%20Cost%20of%20Energy%20-%20Version%208.0.pdf

https://www.iea.org/Textbase/npsum/WEO2014SUM.pdf

https://www.powergridindia.com/_layouts/PowerGrid/WriteReadData/file/ourBusiness/SmartGrid/desert_power_india.pdf

https://www.powergridindia.com/_layouts/PowerGrid/WriteReadData/file/ourBusiness/SmartGrid/desert_power_india.pdf

http://www.cea.nic.in/installed_capacity.html

https://www.db.com/cr/en/docs/solar_report_full_length.pdf

http://www.mnre.gov.in/file-manager/UserFiles/mission_document_JNNSM.pdf

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.ACCS.ZS

http://databank.worldbank.org/data/download/GDP_PPP.pdf

sankar&surel_final_paper_tem 492

Documents