World's cheapest solar power in Madhya Pradesh at Rs 5 per unit

Madhya Pradesh is set to be home to the cheapest solar power not only in India but the entire world, finally offering a cost-effective alternative to the environmentally-harmful thermal power.

Updated on: Aug 10, 2015, 01:38:24 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Madhya Pradesh is set to be home to the cheapest solar power not only in India but the entire world, finally offering a cost-effective alternative to the environmentally-harmful thermal power.

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Companies that have bid for projects floated by the Madhya Pradesh Power Management Company are ready to sell solar energy to the state for as less as Rs 5 per unit for a period of over 20 years. According to energy experts, the offer is lower than the global average price of Rs 6.10 per unit and even beats the cost at which the Delhi government buys from thermal power companies.

The price of solar power has seen a global decline in the last few years with India too witnessing a dramatic fall – fastest in the world – since 2010 when the Jawaharlal Nehru Solar Mission was launched. A unit of solar energy cost Rs 17 then.

The plummeting prices can be attributed to an increase in Chinese export of low-cost photovoltaic cells that has in turn led to an 80% drop in prices of solar panels over the last five years. Also, the efficiency of the panels to convert solar energy into electricity has improved from 13% to 18%, resulting in cheaper power.

India is a major investment destination for major international and domestic energy firms with Prime Minister Narendra Modi announcing a five-fold increase in target for generating solar power to 100,000MW. All state governments revamped their solar energy policies to meet the new target and Madhya Pradesh was the first to announce the setting up of special solar energy parks with single-window clearance.

A senior official in the Madhya Pradesh renewable energy department termed it the beginning of a new trend which could witness the price of solar energy falling further at a time when thermal power continues to get costlier with an increase in prices of coal.

The Union Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) too expects the price of solar energy to go down further when states like Rajasthan, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh invite bids for their projects.

A senior ministry official said Madhya Pradesh has given a boost to their estimate that solar power will cost less than thermal power across India by early 2016.

“What has happened in India in solar sphere in five years took 15 years in Germany,” Christian Redl of Agora Energywende, a German energy think tank, had told this correspondent during a visit to Germany in May this year.

According to Arunbha Ghosh, chief executive officer of the Delhi-based Centre for Energy Environment and Water, solar technology is seeing a major transformation across the world. “Solar is for energy what internet is for communication. In coming years, you will see solar energy run-equipment in homes like computers,” he said.

Some experts, however, fear that falling prices of solar energy may lead to its doom if corrective policy initiatives are not taken.

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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