Recently during my visit to US, I had a chance to interact with
companies and professionals engaged in deciding the future of solar energy in
India as well as other parts of the world. India, a country of 1.25 billion
people is having huge gap in demand and supply of energy, as a result there is
frequent outage of power and people have to suffer intolerable heat in summer
and industries are having stunted growth for want of continuous supply of
electricity. I had prepared a strategic plan for the newly formed
government in India for their attention and implementation in making India energy surplus in 2-3 year's of time. I sent the strategic plan to
the prime minister's office and to the office of minister in charge of coal,
power and renewable energy in the month of June 2014. I received an
acknowledgement from the honorable minister Mr. Piyush Goyal but received
a tepid response from the industry. It seems that there is a disparity between
my envisaged plan and the magnitude of problem India is facing.
Since I am not at an engineer who can
understand the technical difficulties in fulfilling this mammoth task as such
they could not understand the wisdom behind my strategic plan. I got this
indication from the expression of bewildered professionals in US,
that how am I going to achieve this target. But they forgot that I am a
strategic thinker and capable of preparing projects and plans for achieving
this target much better than any bemused experts.
India's total generation capacity is 205.34
GW + 31.5 GW through Captive Power Generation= Total
236.84 GW. Whereas as per the Energy Statistics 2013 of India, the
current requirement is about 325 GW. It means there is a
current annual shortage of 88.16 GW. This gap has been further
amplified due to the lack of a network of power grid lines and
inefficient governance in states, which takes care of distribution of
electricity. Therefore their amazement was very obvious as they were
unable to think out of the box in making the best use of the available technology
and resources to achieve this target.
The largest Hydro Power Plant
was built over Three Gorges Dam inChina, produces
22,500 Mega Watts (MW) or 22.5 Giga Watts (GW) of energy. The
largest Nuclear Power Plant is Kashiwazaki-Kairwa in Japanwhich
produces 7,965 MW or 7.9 GW of electricity. The largest Fuel
Oil Power Plant is in Shoaiba, Saudi Arabia which
produces 5,600 MW or5.6 GW of electricity. The largest Coal
fired Power Plant is in Taichung,Taiwan which produces
7,724 MW or 7.7 GW of electricity. The largestNatural Gas fired
Power Plant is in Surgut-2, Russia which produces 5,597 MW or 5.6
GW of electricity and the largest Solar Power through
Flat-Panel Photovoltaic in Topaz, California has the capacity to produce 300MW
or 0.3GW of electricity.
In view of the above production
capacities and to fill a gap of 88.16 GW of electricity,
India will need 4 (Four) Hydro Power Plants of the size
of Three Gorges of China or 12 (Twelve) Nuclear Power Plants of
the size of Kashiwazaki of Japan or 16 (Sixteen) Fuel Power Plants of
the size of Shoaiba of Saudi Arabia or 12 (Twelve) Coal Fired Power
Plant on the model of Taichung of Taiwan or 16 (Sixteen) Gas
Fired Power Plant on the model of Surgut of Russia or 294 (Two
hundred ninety four) Solar Power Plants on the model of Topaz,
California at the cost of billions of dollar for each power plant.
The above number of course is
confusing and baffling for any expert in power industry, educated and book
smart people of the world to achieve the target and that too without polluting
the environment and without spending billions of dollar. Therefore my strategic
plan submitted to the Government of India and posted on my other blogs,
must have looked nonsensical in the eyes of our intelligent, smart and bemused
competent friends. They must have thought that I live in the world of illusion
and must have advised the Government of India under the influence of
intoxication.
Now I will like to discuss how my
strategic plan and vision of making India energy surplus within 2-3 years of
time is possible and that too without investing substantial money by the
Government of India. However it is also true that without the legislative
support of the government, it will not be possible for any company or a group
of companies in the world to achieve this target. Government will have to
mobilize people with all kinds of support - reform in electricity
bill, tax incentives/exemption, financial support, low financing rate or loan
holidays, creation of a network of active power grid etc. It will be
economically beneficial to the government of India to provide above incentives
instead of spending billions of dollar in equivalent rupees and mortgaging the
country for building super large power plants.
To harness the power of free market
system, entrepreneurial skills of people and their capacity to make India power
surplus within the time frame, I have given hereunder an example of Solar
Energy for electrifying homes on large scale in India. However
my focus for making Indian energy surplus within the envisaged time frame is
not only based on Solar Power but other Green and Renewable Energy such
as Wind Power, Geothermal and Biomass.
While working on this self imposed
project, I have come across with smart solar system for electrifying houses
ranging from 500 Watt to 2,500 Watt capacity. There may be other efficient
system with higher capacity for homes, but for the sake of my calculation
and demonstration of the power of power, I have taken 2,500 Watt Smart Solar
System.
One Solar Panel can produce about 75
Watts per square meter of Solar energy or 7.5 Watts per
square foot of solar energy per day. Therefore to produce 2,500 Watts of solar
energy about 333 sq.ft of solar panel is required.
Average home consumes about 10KW of
power if cooking, washing, water heating etc. are used on a daily basis. As
such a 2,500Wattcapacity of Solar System can feed about 250
homes with renewable energy per day or 2,500Watts x 300 clear
sunny days = 750,000Watts = 750KW or 0.750MW.
To produce solar energy for
homes only, we will require:
0.750MW x 1,335
solar systems of 2,500KW capacity will produce =1001MW = 1GW of
energy.
1335 solar systems
x 1000 = 1,335,000 solar systems = 10GW of
Solar Energy
In order to produce 10 GW of
Solar Power we will need 1,335,000 Solar Systems of 2,500
watts to create a cluster of 250 homes and that can take care of 333,750,000 houses.
Now the question can be raised that who or how the installation of 1,335,000
pieces of 2,500KW smart solar system will be made possible. Here professionals
like us come into the picture for making strategic marketing plans and their
successful execution within the time limit.
As per the Census 2011 of
Census India, total number of occupied census houses in India is 306,162,799 which
includes houses used as residence (236,062,866) residence cum other uses
(8,578,716), shop /office (17,672,786), school / college (2,106,530),
hotel/lodge, guest houses (720,806); Hospital / Dispensary etc (683,202);
Factory/ Workshop/Workshed etc. (2,496,655); Place of Worship (3,013,140);
Other non-residential use (33,547,747) and number of Occupied locked census
houses (1,280,351).
Therefore if we are able to
successfully install 1,335,000 solar systems of 2,500Watts capacity by
way of making it a national event on the scale of mass scale energy revolution
then 100% of census houses can have24 hours, 365 days of
solar power. An annual consumption of 0.750 MWof energy per home in
smaller towns is on the higher scale as they only use couple of light bulbs and
fans. As such I presume there will be plenty of mega watts of surplus energy
available for contribution to the central power grid system for the industrial
sector. Besides census houses (which includes shops, offices, schools, colleges,
hotels, guest houses, hospital, factory buildings, workshops etc); street
lights, traffic lights, petrol pumps, cinema and theatres, public parks, bus
stands, railway stations, and airports etc. can also be made energy independent
with the help of renewable energy. This will take substantial pressure off the
national power grid system and common public will have enough energy to cool
off themselves in sweltering heat of India.
As mentioned above, this can be made
possible by way of providing incentives and introducing various national
schemes for the solar power system manufacturers and for the consumers.
By promoting similar incentives to
other sources of renewable energy -Wind Energy (currently producing
about 49,132 MW or 49 GW), and energy from Biomass (Current
potentiality= 17,538 or 17.5GW) and by combining solar power energy , 100%
requirements of energy can be made available to the agriculture sector. Besides
tonnes of garbage produced by every town in India can further contribute
towards producing energy. Geothermal can also contribute a
great deal in generating electricity.
Once the majority of households,
small and medium size businesses, agriculture sector, city and town lighting
system becomes energy independent then energy produced by existing power plants
- coal, gas and nuclear can be made available to large industries and mega
cities.
Other positive effects of making this
a national event would be that in the process, thousands of people will get
employment opportunity in manufacturing of renewable energy system/plants,
selling and marketing, transportation & logistics, installations, repairs
and servicing etc. Thousand of ancillary manufacturing units related to renewable
energy will mushroom in the country which will further contribute towards
employment and increase in the per capita household income.
Therefore, I am convinced that this
mammoth project can be achieved not only by the engineers, large corporations
and the government but also by the professionals who have the ability to make
strategic plans and foresee different dimensions, prepare a multi-lateral
scope statements keeping in view of the composition of towns, cities,
villages, their socio-economic conditions and targets to be achieved and
monitor the progress by placing Key Performance Indexes (KPI) for each layers
and sectors. To my mind this is doable and can be made possible by the people
who have the vision and passion to make it successful.
In view of this article, I will like
to ask my professional friends worldwide - How to make a country like India
energy surplus in a shortest possible time with the help of Green Energy? Can
they suggest other alternatives?
Your comments and suggestions are welcome.
Suman Saran Sinha, CMC
Certified Management Consultant
for Strategic
Planning and Execution
