Small towns power solar sector against China

Mofussil towns have given a fillip to unprecedented growth of India’s solar power sector. In a few years, Patna’s solar market has earned around Rs. 500 crore, solar business in Bhopal has almost doubled since 2009 and Ballia — a small town in Uttar Pradesh and hometown of former PM Chandrashekar — has a Rs. 100-crore solar business.

Updated on: Nov 7, 2012, 03:14:38 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Mofussil towns have given a fillip to unprecedented growth of India’s solar power sector. In a few years, Patna’s solar market has earned around Rs. 500 crore, solar business in Bhopal has almost doubled since 2009 and Ballia — a small town in Uttar Pradesh and hometown of former PM Chandrashekar — has a Rs. 100-crore solar business.

“Solar power is turning into a viable alternative in rural hinterland that has no power connection and regions where regular power supply is unreliable,” said Gireesh Pradhan, secretary, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy.

Most of the tailor-made solar products, however, are coming from China, not Indian manufacturers.

“Affordable cost of the Chinese solar products is their selling point,” said Ram Kripal Singh, a wholesale distributor of solar goods in Delhi’s Lajpat Rai market.

“Around 70% of the solar market sells Chinese goods”.

Many in the business claimed that Chinese solar manufacturers are developing products as per the requirements of rural Indians. And, the latest in the league is solar water pump for a house for just Rs. 5,000.

The new and renewable energy ministry in a survey has found that most of the solar equipment coming from China are low in efficiency. “The Chinese solar panels provide just 7-8 % efficiency compared to the normal efficiency of 16-17%,” said a ministry official.

A Chinese solar panel takes twice as much time to charge a battery as a more efficient panel. But cheap Chinese solar goods have created new business opportunities since they are a huge hit in rural India. “The investment can be recovered in at least two years,” Singh said.

Indian solar market’s 22% growth, courtesy the Chinese goods, has perturbed the Centre which later tried to impose the anti-dumping duty on Chinese solar equipment. The US too had come up with a similar plan.

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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