India’s Solar Policy: JNNSM
The National Solar Mission is an initiative of the Government of India and State Governments to promote solar power. The mission is one of the several policies of the National Action Plan on Climate Change. The program was inaugurated as the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission.by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on 11 January 2010.with a target of 20 GW by 2022. This was later increased to 100 GW by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the 2015 Union budget of India. India increased its utility solar power generation capacity by nearly 5 times from 2,650 MW on 26 May 2014 to 12,288.83 MW on 31 March 2017. The country added 9,362.65 MW in 2017–18, the highest of any year. The original target of 20 GW was surpassed in 2018 (counting only utility installed capacity), four years ahead of the 2022 deadline. India had a total rooftop solar installed capacity of 6.1 GW as of 30 June 2021. The objective of the National Solar Mission is to establish India as a global leader in solar energy, by creating the policy conditions for its diffusion across the country as quickly as possible. Under the original plan, the Government aimed to achieve a total installed solar capacity of 20 GW by 2022. This was proposed to be achieved in three phase. The first phase comprised the period from 2010 to 2013, the first year of the 12th five-year plan. The second phase extended up to 2017, while the third phase would have been the 13th five-year plan (2017–22). Targets were set as 1.4 GW in the first phase, 11–15 GW by the end of the second phase and 22 GW by the end of the third phase in 2022. Increased 100 GW is further divided into 40 GW of solar rooftop, 40 GW of Ultra mega solar power projects (500MW or more) and 20 GW is independent solar powerplant (miscellaneous). Based upon availability of land and solar radiation, the potential Solar power in the country has been assessed to be around 750 GWp.
The Government revised the target from 20 GW to 100 GW on 1 July 2015. To reach 100 GW by 2022, the yearly targets from 2015 to 2016 onwards were also revised upwards. India had an installed solar capacity of 161 MW on 31 March 2010, about 2 and half months after the mission was launched on 11 January. By 31 March 2015, three months before the targets were revised, India had achieved an installed solar capacity of 3,744 MW.
The ministry of new and renewable energy (MNRE) set target of 450 GW of renewable energy by 2030. The last target was 175 GW out of which 100 GW by solar energy by the end of year 2022. In the first phase of JNNSM (2010-2013) 50 rupees cess on per tonne of coal imposed on coal producing companies. In second phase (2013-2017) this cess was increased to 400 rupees (2014) and this cess was named as clean environment cess. This amount of cess was transferred into national clean energy fund. The money collected by this was funded for next phase (2017-2020). In 2013 GOI came with proposal of domestic content requirement for financial support of solar power producer. Two conditions were imposed on solar power producers. First one was the government (central/state/PSUs) is buyer and second one was a certain % of solar panel must be bought by domestic solar companies.
Rooftop Phase-I of this programme was launched on 30th December, 2015 in which incentives and subsidies were provided for residential, institutional and social sectors. For Government sector, achievement linked incentives were also provided. Rooftop Phase-II was launched in February 2019 with a target of achieving cumulative capacity of 40,000 MW by the year 2022. Under rooftop solar scheme, Central Financial Assistance (CFA) of 40% for RTS systems up to 3 kW capacity and 20% for capacity beyond 3 kW and up to 10 kW is provided. For Group Housing Societies (GHS) and Residents Welfare Associations (RWA), CFA is limited to 20% for RTS plants for supply of power to common facilities. So far over 3.7 GW capacity of RTS capacity has been estimated to have been installed in the country and over 2.6 GW capacity is under installation in the residential segment. The Ministry introduced the Solar Parks programme with the objective of facilitating solar project developers to set up projects in a plug-and-play model. The scheme for development of solar parks has a target capacity of 40 GW. All States and Union Territories are eligible for getting benefitted under the scheme. Solar parks are being developed by agencies of Central/State Governments, Joint Ventures between agencies of Central and State Governments and also by private entrepreneurs.
In Off grid GOI’s initiatives are PM- KUSUM, solar street lights/Atal jyoti yojana /AJAY (3 lakhs), Solar study lamps (25 lakhs), 100 MWp of off grid solar power projects, 7 million study lamps for school going children (50% unelectrified households /50% kerosene using households) and scale up of excess to clean energy for rural livelihood (solar energy for supporting poultry, horticulture, solar cold storage).
PM-KUSUM has three components:
1: 17.5 lakh stand-alone isolated solar pumps with capacity up to 75 Hp for agriculture sector
2: Solarization of 10 lakh grid connected pumps with capacity up to 75 Hp.
3: 10 GW of grid connected solar power of size 2 MW.
For solar rooftop SARAL INDEX (State rooftop solar attractiveness) is initiated by MNRE. In this initiative rank is given to the Indian states for their policy initiative for solar power performance. NET metering concept is also introduced. SECI was established in 2011 whose purpose is to do execution of solar power project in India.
As on 31.12.2020, a total solar power capacity installed is 37.46 GW. In addition, tenders of around 36.69 GW are in pipeline for which Letter of Intent (LoI) has been issued but not commissioned and for around 18.47 GW tenders have been issued but LoI are yet to be issued. Thus, it is expected to fully achieve the target of 100 GW by 2022. It is expected that the solar power projects of around 40 GW cumulative capacity will be commissioned by March, 2021.
Karnataka(7.328 GW), Rajasthan(5.389 GW) and Tamil Nadu(4.315 GW) are top performing states in the field of solar energy installed capacity.