(Video) Rajya Sabha TV (RSTV) The Big Picture: India's Solar Energy Push

Topic: India's Solar Energy Push

Guest:

Upendra Tripathy, (Director General, International Solar Alliance)
Subhomoy Bhattacharjee, (Consulting Editor, Business Standard)
Prafulla Pathak, President, (Solar Energy Society of India)

Topic Description:

On 15 February, 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made an interesting observation in his inaugural speech for the first RE-Invest global summit in New Delhi. He remarked that Indian energy sector has been thinking in terms of Mega Watts (MW), but for the first time, India had started talking about Giga Watts (GW). It was inconceivable that India aimed at 100 GW of installed solar power capacity by 2022, given that the entire country had under 3 GW of existing installations when the Modi government took over. Yet, the ambitious target set clearly signalled the government’s intent to make solar energy an integral part of Indian energy security strategy. India has managed to hit about 35 GW in installed capacity till now. One major gap is rooftop solar, which has not progressed much. So while adding 65 GW of solar capacity in two years looks tough, opening up the rooftop solar market nationwide can help push the envelope. But even this current progress from 3 GW to 35 GW was not easy. One of the projects which gave impetus to this journey was the Rewa Ultra Mega Solar Ltd (RUMSL) solar plant, inaugurated by PM Modi on 10 July.