National Solar Mission - Key Highlights

Government of India approved last week National Solar mission under which following targets and policy changes will happen:

• Create an enabling policy framework for the deployment of 20,000 MW of solar power by 2022.
• Ramp up capacity of grid-connected solar power generation to 1000 MW within three years – by 2013;
• Achieve 15 million sq. meters solar thermal collector area by 2017 and 20 million by 2022 (about 10 GWth).
• Deploy 20 million solar lighting systems for rural areas by 2022. MNRE will give 90% subsidy for solar lights distributed to off grid villages.
• Key thing in this is that NTPC will now be the power trader for solar power projects and sell the aggregated power to utilities. This will help power project developers to deal with only a single entity rather than multiple entities to get feed-in tariff.
• PPA will be 25 years rather than 10 years now.
• Setting up of a National Centre for Photovoltaic Research and Education at IIT, Mumbai drawing upon its Department of Energy Science and Engineering and its Centre for Excellence in Nano-Electronics.

Manoj