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. Industries are also 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 solar industry. It seems to be an impossible task for them in view of the magnitude of problem
India is facing in energy sector.
I am not at an engineer neither I belong from the energy sector, yet I have the wisdom to foresee and execute my strategic plan successfully. During my meeting with the professionals I could see the bewilderment on their faces, that how am I going to achieve this target. 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.
I am not at an engineer neither I belong from the energy sector, yet I have the wisdom to foresee and execute my strategic plan successfully. During my meeting with the professionals I could see the bewilderment on their faces, that how am I going to achieve this target. 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 in China,
produces 22,500 Mega Watts (MW) or 22.5
Giga Watts (GW) of energy. The largest Nuclear
Power Plant is Kashiwazaki-Kairwa in Japan
which 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 or 5.6 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 largest Natural 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 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 and further pollute the environment.
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 to demonstrate 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 2,500Watt capacity 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 and they will collectively produce 1001MW or 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 houses and that can take care of 333,750,000 houses. Now the question may be be raised that 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 have 24 hours,
365 days of solar power. An annual consumption of 0.750 MW of 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 on weekly and monthly basis. 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