Delhi fails to plug into solar power

Despite facing long power outages, Delhiites still seem to harbour reservations about going solar. The city lags behind several states, especially in western and southern India, in this field. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: May 31, 2013, 01:38:15 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Despite facing long power outages, Delhiites still seem to harbour reservations about going solar. The city lags behind several states, especially in western and southern India, in this field.

Delhi gets almost the same amount of sunlight - about 10 months - as these states, yet the renewable energy revolution is yet to catch up here.

Take for instance Kerala, which is building nearly 10,000 homes equipped with solar electricity and giving subsidies to people who install solar panels apart from the Centre's. Tamil Nadu has gone even bigger. It plans to build 60,000 homes fitted with solar power for the poor every year. Karnataka offers a lucrative subsidy as an incentive for installing solar home systems.

There is one big reason why these schemes have worked so well in southern states: Long power outages.

"Solar energy is turning out to be reliable and cheaper alternative," a ministry official said, adding that many backward states such as Bihar and Rajasthan have come up with ambitious solar plans.

In Gujarat, it is now mandatory for all government homes to have solar panels. Rajasthan government has begun to vigorously promote solar homes in rural areas.

But central government officials said Delhi has not shown much enthusiasm towards this form of energy, so much so that the city government has even withdrawn subsidy on solar water heaters.

A senior official of a private power distribution company in Delhi, however, differed with the Centre's view.

He said the scheme is not popular in the Capital because of better reliability of power and structural bottlenecks in old buildings to install solar systems. "We have not been able to move ahead from the demonstration projects," said a NDPL official, the company which generates about 17MW of solar power through pilots.

Central officials, however, said that people would opt for solar as cost of thermal power is rising constantly. "In the coming years, I can see a scenario where thermal power will supplement solar energy as it happens in countries such as Germany," an official said.

Tapping the emerging potential of solar power, many top companies are now selling solar inverters, a smaller version of the home system.

"One can buy 800 KVA solar inverter with additional cost of Rs 10,000-Rs 15,000," said an official of one of these companies.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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