Solar photovoltaics offer tremendous growth potential to a country like ours.

Also Read   News Now Paper Specials - Hat-trick of gains - Wkly Tech Analysis: Nifty may move in 4,640-4,900 band - Chandrayaan-II mission to be completed by 2012-13: Annadurai - Faheem Ansari seeks re-trial of 26/11 case - US faces potential minefield over Muslims and military More     Also Read   News Now Paper Specials - Great Indian telecom boom begins to ring hollow - Vendors to share BSNL&£39;s 3G ad spend - DTH sparks new row between producers and multiplexes - T Rowe Price pays Rs 700 cr for 26% in UTI - Rosy Blue rules the world of glitter More   Also Read   News Now Paper Specials   - Q3 FY09 Results: Earnings Season - Saving Satyam: Govt gets into action - India-Pakistan Tensions: Fallout of Mumbai Terror Attack - Your Money: Where to invest - Market Crash: Global worries weigh - Time Out: Books, fashion, food, travel, sports, health...  More

Barack Obama has announced a programme to create five million new jobs by investing $150 billion over the next 10 years, to catalyse private efforts to build a clean energy future. Where does India stand in this field?

As in so many areas of national endeavour, it was Nehru who was the pioneer protagonist of solar energy. Indira Gandhi gave a big push in the ’70s and ’80s, and Narasimha Rao in the ’90s. R&D and prototype development on solar electricity generating systems (called solar photovoltaics, or SPV for short) had started at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) as far back as 1955, at Nehru’s instance. Small SPV lighting systems were developed and field proven, as were solar cookers. However, solar energy did not catch on till around 1975 because cost-effective materials and technologies for terrestrial applications did not then exist anywhere in the world. Till 1973, SPV power sources were only used to power earth satellites.

It was the first “oil shock” of 1973 that brought solar cells to earth! The early R&D and prototype development was undertaken by major international US oil companies — Arco Solar & Exxon Solar, with massive funding by the US government.

Thanks to a major initiative by Indira Gandhi, an SPV R&D programme was also nucleated in our public sector company, Central Electronics Ltd (CEL), as early as 1976 — just three-four years after Arco Solar. Over the last 30 years, we have undertaken a sustained scientific, technological, industrial, commercial and governmental effort to promote and build up SPV applications, industry and R&D. Consequently, we now have a large and diversified SPV industry consisting of 10 fully vertically integrated SPV manufacturers making solar cells, solar panels and complete SPV systems, and around 50 assemblers of various kinds. Between them these companies make and supply around 200 MW per year of 30 different types of SPV systems in three categories — rural, remote-area and industrial. We also have at least six centres of R&D in government laboratories and IITs.

CEL was the world’s first — in 1985 — to design, develop, engineer and manufacture SPV power systems for powering a large amount of electronics on the offshore oil well-head platforms of ONGC in Bombay High. Today some 60 such platforms have been “solarised” by CEL. The world’s second manufacturer of such SPV systems was BP Solar of the UK in the Persian Gulf, but only in 1990. CEL has done likewise for special-tech, ultra lightweight SPV man-pack battery chargers for wireless communication sets for our jawans all over the country, but particularly in Siachen where they have to work continuously on a “fail-safe basis” at temperatures as low as minus 40°C and in the Thar desert where they have to do likewise at (plus) 55°C. Over the years, CEL has supplied around 14,000 such solar chargers to our army and also selectively exported them. There is no other company making such chargers anywhere in the world and they have also been internationally patented.

CEL has also exported many types of its SPV systems to some dozen other developing countries. It has also exported its proprietary SPV technology and set up manufacturing plants in Syria, Sudan and Kenya in competition with Western SPV Companies and made substantial profits on those projects.

Taken as a whole, we are among the top five countries in SPV energy and number one in many areas. At 2.8 million as of March 31, 2008, the total number of stand-alone SPV systems of the 30 different types our companies have manufactured, installed, commissioned and operationalised is by far the largest number of SPV systems set up by and installed in any one country — and almost all based on Indian technology. Most of these systems are installed and operating in a developing country’s rural or remote areas. This uniquely requires that they be reliable and rugged enough from design to commissioning to operate on a “fit and forget” basis.

Apart from such stand-alone SPV power sources meant for remote area rural and industrial applications, the MNES/MNRE programme has, over the last decade, involved a large number of public grid- and local grid-based SPV power plants having capacities ranging from 5 KW to 200 KW, for a diverse range of users — from the two buildings of the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation at Chennai where there is no conventional grid supply at all, to the main building of the R&D Engineers of DRDO at Pune, to the Maharshi Centre in Nagpur.

Several pilot projects have also been undertaken by our SPV manufacturers of specially designed, grid-connected 100 KW power plants at the front end of conventional grids for peak shaving and at the tail end for voltage stabilisation. They are working well and generating valuable data for the design of future systems. The use of SPV for such applications is in its infancy even in the industrialised countries. So, this is yet one more area of substantiation that our SPV is far from being “light years behind the rest of the world”, as an article in this newspaper erroneously alleged a few weeks ago.

A major success story in the use of SPV power on a local grid is that of Sagar Island in the Sunderbans in West Bengal. The Mission, “Sagar Island — Solar Island”, was inaugurated in December 1996. It consisted of providing high-quality, 50-cycle 220 volt solar-derived electricity for home and street lighting and solar pumps to all the 12,000 homes on the island through a local grid, and powering a large fish freezing plant through a wind-SPV hybrid power plant. With a steady and sustained programme of adding modules from 20 KW to 120 KW, a solar power-generating capacity of 500 KW was operationalised by end-2000; another 500 KW has since been set up. The SPV panels and the complex electronic power conditioning systems for all the 25 KW power modules have been supplied against tenders floated by the West Bengal Renewable Energy Development Agency (WBREDA) by six of our major SPV manufacturers, based entirely on local know-how, while the overall system design and engineering was done by WBREDA. Sagar is the only totally SPV island in the world. The cost of the generated power is Rs 10/KWh, but the villagers on Sagar, knowing fully well that they will never get electricity by any other means, are paying Rs 7/KWh while the West Bengal Government is covering the Rs 3/KWh gap through a subsidy.

The writer is Former Science Adviser to late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and former Secretary of various scientific departments of the Government of India

Read Business news in  Advertisements   Your dream home can now be a reality.   Visit Fortis for a preventive health check-up & get a 20% discount.   Follow the ups and downs of your investments. Try our new Portfolio Tracker   Kolkata Dock \ Freight contract for the British Gurkhas Nepal   Find how Midsize Businesses use ERP to gain competitive advantage   Trading in Forex is now as easy as 1-2-3   Discover an economical and cost effective way to market your products and services   Giftwithlove.com: Same day delivery of Flowers and Cakes to India   Download the E-book on the Future of Business Intelligence   Learn Best Practices for improving customer satisfaction   Know your customers better... download the free e-book on CRM