India is the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy sources and, if properly utilized, India can realize its place in the world as a great power — but political will is required for the eventual shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
India is aiming to expand its solar energy facilities so as to build ‘Green India’ through harnessing abundant solar radiation as well as to achieve energy security for the country.
There are multifold reasons behind india giving impetus to solar energy:
BENEFITS

• Energy Security: Lesser dependence on oil imports through development and deployment of alternate fuels and to bridge the gap between domestic oil supply and demand;
• Increase in the share of clean power: Renewable (bio, wind, hydro, solar, geothermal & tidal) electricity to supplement fossil fuel based electricity generation;
• Energy Availability and Access: Supplement energy needs of cooking, heating, power needs in unelectrified rural areas and also to expand the existing and build new energy infrastructure for urban, industrial and commercial sectors;
• Energy Affordability: Cost-competitive, convenient, clean, and renewable energy supply options.

Solar energy can revolutionize India’s energy sector

Rural electrification

Around 18,000 villages in India are yet unelectrified. India has huge task in front of it to bring electricity to theses villages.
Villages in India need off grid solutions for power supply as there is no micro grid connected with main transmission grid.
Using FFs like coal for power generation would be difficult and will cost immensely in terms of environment degradation. India is looking for various alternative clean fuels which can serve dual purpose of energy needs as well as clean environment.
Given the present condition of grids in accessible areas, extending them to rural populations is an expensive proposition.
As India has an abundant solar energy available in most parts of the country, a better option would be distributed, community level, renewable energy based solar photo-voltaic (PV) mini grids.
Off-grid solar power plants can be considered as transitory till the grid arrives. Solar mini-grids is non polluting and promotes decentralized development.

Solar lamps replaced kerosene lamps
Off-grid decentralized systems, based on renewable energy(solar, biomass etc) are lighting up around 1,000 villages through government funding. Before this, subsidized kerosene was needed to light a bulb .
Kerosene lamps convert 65 per cent of their energy to light. Kerosene lamps cause local and indoor air pollution. Kerosene and candles cause countless fire catastrophes every year. Kerosene is far more expensive than electric lighting.
Solar powered lamps can replace the need for kerosene for lightening .

Agricultural support
Solar powered water pumping system can fulfill power needs of farmers as well as it is renewable and clean source of energy. Indian agriculture is both under-irrigated and over-irrigated.
A severe groundwater crisis is looming in several states even as millions of farmers remain vulnerable to the vagaries of the monsoon.
It has become increasingly challenging to provide affordable irrigation services through conventional technologies, both from fiscal and environmental perspectives.
The agriculture power subsidy burden has been rising steadily. Yet farmers have to contend with unreliable and poor quality power supply. Currently farmers in India uses diesel pump sets which are both expensive to run and environmentally hazardous.
Solar pumps could help fill irrigation gaps, mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and help farmers adapt to climate change impacts.
Solar water heaters
Solar water heater is a system that utilizes solar energy to heat water. It has a system that is installed on a terrace or open space where it can get sunlight and the energy from the sun is then used to heat water and store it in an insulated tank. The system is not connected to electricity supply and thus does not have an on-off switch, but it uses the sunlight throughout the day to heat the water and store it in the storage tank.
Installing solar water heaters helps in saving units of electricity , if number of clear sunny days are more, number of units of electricity saved will increase.
To generate 1500 units of electricity from a coal-based power plant, 1.5 tone of CO2 /year is released in atmosphere. One million solar water heating systems installed in homes can result in reduction of 1.5 million tone of CO2 emission in atmosphere.
Solar Parks
India is planning to build Solar parks that can enable development of solar power in remote areas where land is inexpensive.
Transmission system will be developed for the entire Park.
India will emerge as a major solar power producing country as nowhere in the world are solar parks are being developed on such a large scale.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Opportunities

• India is endowed with abundant free solar energy. Using the country’s deserts and farm land and taking advantage of 300 to 330 sunny days a year, India could easily generate 5,000 trillion kilowatt-hours of solar energy.
• Empowerment of people at grassroot level-
• Solar energy can transform India and help to bring about decentralized distribution of energy, thereby empowering people at the grassroots level and eliminating the need for costly expansion of transmission and distribution systems.
• Solar power can solve three problems which India is facing-cost , reliability, clean environment and energy needs.
• Eliminate the need for building new or expanding existing transmission and distribution lines as solar powered microgrids can take substantial load .
• In long run saving will be more than upfront cost of soar power. As once the high upfront investment costs have been circumnavigated, the shift to renewable sources would actually be cost positive.The fuel savings up to 2030 would amount to $2,170 billion, seven times more than the additional investment costs.

Challenges

• Availability of skilled manpower to install and operate these mini grids is a major roadblock to scale up these systems across lakhs of villages.
• Appropriate metering, pricing and payment collection systems .
• Credit for mini solar projects- As banks are not inclined to finance these small scale projects particularly local entrepreneurs who lack credit history and collateral.
• Confusion over applicability of subsidies. Present subsidy regimes are either insufficient or too tedious.
• Appropriate capital grant or subsidy a must to make installation of mini-grids feasible even as a social business.
• Operational challenges like overheads of reaching remote places , logistics, laying down a localized grid.
• In agriculture how to make solar pumps financially accessible to small and marginal farmers. Innovative financial products and well targeted research and development is needed to make solar power cost effective.