New gold rush
India is on a mission. To drastically ramp up its solar power production to 22,000 MW by 2022. From steel makers and automobile manufacturers to diamond merchants and realtors everyone sees the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission as their chance to strike gold. But it is not so easy. The first phase of the solar mission focuses on producing 1,000 MW. To be precise in the first year of the mission, only 150 MW of capacity would be added. There is little scope for power producers to build large plants that feed electricity into the grid. Technology is another challenge. Indian solar equipment makers still cannot match the best in the world. In 16 years India wants to reduce the cost of solar power to that of coal. This can happen only by promoting research and competition, says Arnab Pratim Dutta. The national solar mission gets Deepak Puri excited. It widens avenues for his multi-technology company Moser Baer. But he has a word of caution. The government should verify the antecedents of the companies it selects. Else it could become a tax-break haven like the wind energy industry that attracted high net-worth individuals like Bollywood personalities. “They were not interested in wind energy but the 80 per cent tax break the new technology promised,” said Puri sitting at Moser Baer’s plush headquarters in Delhi’s Okhla Industrial Estate. “We know today that many of the contractors, who took on the assignment to build and operate the plants, used poor quality equipment and disappeared. Solar must not fall into this trap.”
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