With the diesel gensets powering 3 lakh telecom towers guzzling Rs 6,400 crore fossil fuel every year, the time has come to think about solar power replacing diesel gensets, said Farooq Abdullah, minister of new and renewable energy (MNRE). ?While the need for tower powering is around 3 kw the companies install gensets with larger 15 kw capacity and there is a huge market in solar by replacing the fossil fuel usage,? he said.
Speaking at the seminar on mainstreaming green energy organized by Assocham, Abdullah said government would extend the entire required fillip like capital subsidy, interest subsidy and accelerated depreciation of equipment to those wishing to make investments in this area. When 85% crude oil imports go for power production in the country, solar technology could come handy in replacing 30,000 mw of power produced by diesel and 6,000 mw of power by furnace oil.
Underscoring the incidence of maximum transmission losses of the current Indian grid system, the MNRE minister said the investors should explore the option of bringing micro hydel and solar to 40% of villages that are off the electricity map of India. ?I am throwing bait to industry to invest and grow, but with a word of caution of not dumping cheap technology in the Indian market. Our government would encourage indigenization of operational technology at every level?, he said.
Stressing on the Indianisation of technology, he appealed to the industry stakeholders to give a serious thought as they await abundant opportunities once if their technology is proved successful in the Indian market. ?Indianisation would not only help India, but
also countries like Africa where our renewable energy entrepreneurs have a huge opportunity in exporting tested local
technology from Indian soil?, he said.
Abdullah expressed concern over the power production cost being around Rs 18 a unit from solar technology and said that expansion in scale and volume would drastically bring the production cost down to the affordable level. The proposed 20 million square meter coverage by 2022 under the national solar mission(NSM) titled Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission is possible with solar industries achieving around 3.2 million square meter coverage at now, he said.
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