This document discusses the potential of solar energy and the prospects and challenges of harnessing it. It notes that solar energy could generate over 150 times the world's current energy demand if 5% of land area was covered with solar panels. However, integrating large amounts of solar power faces technical challenges related to efficiency, grid integration due to variability, and energy storage. Economically, the levelized cost of energy from solar is currently higher than conventional sources. National and state policies aim to overcome these challenges through targets and incentives to promote the growth of solar power in countries like India.

1. Solar Energy
Prospects and Challenges

2. Why Solar?
6.44 0.23
93.34
World Petroleum Consumption by Sector
World Coal Consumption by sector
Commercial
Industrial
Electric Power Sector
18.91
13
30.36
3.42
34.39
World Natural Gas Consumption by Sector
Residential
Commercial
Electric Power Sector
Transportation
Industrial
70.65
24.15
1.62.89 0.72
Transportation
Industrial sector
Electric Power Sector
Residential
Commercial
● Power sector: 41.47%of the total fossil fuel
consumption in the world.
● 16 billion metric tonnes of CO2 pumped into
atmosphere every year!
● Global temperature to rise by 3.6 degree by 2040
with emission rise of 20%.
● Power Sector must be decarbonized upto 25%to
saturate the rise to 2 degree centigrade.

3. ●
Fossil fuels account for 61%of the electric power generated in world.
● Decarbinsation of power sector upto 25%- Increase in use of Renewable Energy Sources from 13%to 38%by
2040.
●
Solar Energy is one of the cleanest sources of energy.
●
Harnessing 5%gives 3000 Trillion kWh – 150 times existing demand of 20 Trillion kWh
●
Solar Panel costs are now 154 times cheaper than they were in 1970!
38.74
0.75
27.41
0.28
19.47
6.32
13.19
Power Generation with various fuels
Coal
Petroleum
Natural Gas
Other Gases
Nuclear Electric Power
Hydroelectric Pumped
Storage
Renewable Energy
Why Solar?
47.93
11.92
3.08
3.39
33.68
RenewableEnergy Sources
Percentageused for power generation
Hydro
Biomass
Geothermal
Solar/PV
Wind

4. 58%
18%
12%
2%
1%
9%
Sources of Power Generation in India (2013)
Coal
H ydro
RES
Nuclear
Diesel
Gas
Power Source Installed Capacity
Thermal 1,30,221 MW
Hydro 39,491 MW
RES 27,542 MW
Gas 20,110 MW
Nuclear 4,780 MW
Diesel 1202 MW
Total 2,23,344 MW
Power Generation in India
● India - Fourth largest primary power
consumer in the world.
● Installed power generating capacity -
2,23,344 MW.
● 70%of total coal consumption is by
Power Sector.
● India is projected to overshoot USA to
second place in terms of coal
consumption by 2020.
China USA Russia India Japan Africa Germany Canada Brazil South Korea
100
80
60
40
20
0
95.06
31.52
23.92 20.31
17.34 13.47 13.35 12.1 11.52
Total Primary Power Consumption (Quadrillion Btu)
120 105.88

5. 1961 1966 1969 1974 1979 1980 1985 1990 1992 1997 2002 2007 2012 2013
Per capita consumption growth - 45.9 kWh in 1961 to 917.2 kWh in 2013!
GDP growth rate of 5.02%as seen in 2013 [4].
IMF estimates the growth to rise to 6.72% by 2019 [5].
IEA projects India and China to have lion's share of Asia's energy demand growth
through 2035
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
900
1000
-10
-8
-6
-4
-2
0
2
4
6
8
10
Per Capita Consumtion (kWh) gdp growth rate (
%
)
Per
capita
consumption
in
kWh
%GDP
growth
rate
●
●
●
●
Per Capita Consumption in kWh

6. Potential of solar energy in
India ●
Located in Equatorial belt.
● Has 300-330 sunny days a year, which is
equivalent to 5000 Trillion kWh.
● Average solar incidence stands at a robust 4-7
kWh/sq.meter/day.
● The annual global radiation varies from 1600
to 2200 kWh/squared meter
●
JNNSM – 20 GW by 2022
●
Upgraded to 100 GW by 2022
●
Great Entrepresneurial opportunities
● 5th
position in terms of Renewable Energy
Country Attrativeness Index as published by
Ernst and Young in March 2015[6].

7. Challenges
Technical:
Efficiency:
Crystalline Silicon
PV Cell (c-Si)
Thin Film PV cell Concentrating PV cell
● Constitutes 85% of market.
● Cut from single crystal Silicon
Ingots.
● Processed to create field via
pn junction.
● Positive and negative contacts
added to convert into PV cell.
● Efficiency: 14%-16%
● 100 times thinner than c-Si.
● Very flexible in nature.
● Made by depositing PV
material on substrate such as
glass, plastic or metal.
● Efficiency:
● CdTe: 9%-12%
● a-Si (Amorphous): 6%-9%
● CIGS: 8%-14%
● They use mirrors or lenses to
concentrate sunlight onto
highly efficient, multi junction
PV cell.
● Capable of much higher
efficiency since each junction is
designed to absorb different
frequency in the spectrum.
● Efficiency: Upto 43.5%

8. Challenges
Technical:
Power Grid Integration:
Solar: Unpredictable source giving rise
to variability.
Three important challenges:
1. Non-Controllable Variability
2. Partial Unpredictability
3. Location Dependancy
Non-Controllable Variability:
●
Output of the plant is variable.
●
Fluctuation in Voltage and Frequency from seconds to minutes.
● AGC, Spinning reserve, AVRs and FACTS to compensate for small
varations.
●
Increased penetration =Large variations
●
Integration over large area reduces variability
Partial Unpredictability:
● Inability to predict with exactness whether or not sun will be
available for energy production.
● Process of unit commitment and calculation of reserves becomes
more complex.
●
A dvanced unit commitment methods must be adopted.

9. Challenges
Technical:
Power Grid Integration:
Solar: Unpredictable source giving rise
to variability.
Three important challenges:
1. Non-Controllable Variability
2. Partial Unpredictability
3. Location Dependancy
Location Dependancy:
●
Remotely located solar resources.
Need to build sufficient T&D infrastructure.
Influenced by regional politics making the development of
transmission for Renewable Energy complex.
Vision of micro-grid for distributed generation.
●
●
●
●
●
●
Solutions for integrating large-capacity RE:
Grid friendly RE generation: Prioritise reliability and stability over
Maximum Power Generation.
Improved Flexibility in conventional generation
Transmission expansion: Geographic diversity can be exploited to
reduce variability.

10. Challenges
Technical:
Storage:
● Unpredictable nature of energy
source.
●
Variable power output.
● Need to convert grid to storage
intensive.
●
Two Challenges to be tackled:
● Increase storage capacity
Reduce Storage expense
●
●
●
●
●
Battery storage technology can provide solution upto 50GWh.
Pumped Hydro Stations: Upto 50 Gwh; limited by terrains
To achieve grid parity, cost of generation and storage must be
comparable to conventional sources.
Conventional battery storage is very expensive and therefore
not economical.
Some of the existing storage technologies are:
● Pumped Hydro
Compressed air
Flywheels
Lead acid batteries
Lithium-ion batteries
Capacitors
SMES
Flow batteries
●
●
●
●
●
●
●

11. Challenges
Technical: Storage technologies cost comparison: [8]
Technology Maturity Cost ($/kWh) Efficiency Response time
Pumped Hydro Mature 138-338 80-82% Seconds to Minutes
Compressed Air
(Underground)
Demo to Mature 60-150 60-70% Seconds to Minutes
Compressed Air
(Above ground)
Demo to Deploy 390-430 60-70% Seconds to Minutes
Flywheels Demo to Mature 7800-8800 85-87% Instantaneous
Lead Acid Batteries Demo to Mature 350-3800 75-90% Milliseconds
Lithium-ion-batteries Demo to Mature 900-6200 87-94% Milliseconds
Flow Batteries
(Vanadium Redox)
Develop to Demo 620-830 65-75% Milliseconds
Flow Batteries
(Zinc Bromide)
Demo to Deploy 290-1350 60-65% Milliseconds
Sodium Sulfur Demo to Deploy 445-555 75% Milliseconds
Power to Gas Demo - 30-45% 10 minutes
Capacitors Develop to Demo - 90-94% Milliseconds
SMES Develop to Demo - 95% Instantaneous

12. Challenges
LCOE= T
otal LifeCycleCost
T
otal Lifetime Energy Production
LCOE of Solar far above the conventional sources.
Need to improve efficiency and storage technology.
Subsidies by Government to ease installation cost.
Favourable Policies.
Challenges
LCOE sus up all the challenges.

13. Solar Policies
RPO (Renewable Purchase Obligation) : Mechanism by which the State Electricity Regulatory Commissions
are obliged to purchase a certain percentage of power from RES.
●
A number of State Solar Policies announced in addition to JNNSM.
Gujarat: Announced Solar policy in 2009, ahead of JNNSM.
●
●
1000 MW during the first Phase of JNNSM
5000 proposal tuning to Rs. 90 billion.
824 MW installed as on 9th
March 2013 accounting for 57.2% of installed capacity in India.
Much of the success credited to Solar Parks.
●
●
●
●
Revised solar policy of Karnataka launched in 2014.
Addition of 2000 MW by 2022 in phased manner: 1600 MW - Grid connected, 400 MW – Rooftop.
Surplus energy injected paid by the ESCOMs at tariff determined by KERC.
Encouragement for farmers to adopt Solar Powered Irrigation Pump sets.
●
●
●

14. Summary
●
Need for shift towards Green Energy.
Solar energy – Posseses enough potential to meet entire energy needs.
Technical Challenges: Efficiency, Power Grid Integration, Storage.
Economic Challenges: LCOE much higher than other sources, need for subsidies to reach grid parity.
JNNSM: 20 GW by 2022
Solar Policy: Gujarat sets benchmark with its policy aiming 1000 MW in first phase.
Karnataka to establish 2000 MW by 2022.
●
●
●
●
●
●

15. Thank You!