Solar Energy International

India is committed to building the world's most powerful solar power plant. With a rated capacity of 4,000 megawatts , comparable to four nuclear reactors in the full screen mode , the ultra -mega- project " is over ten times larger than any project ever built Solar energy, and it will, spread over 77 square miles of land - more than the island of Manhattan.

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Six public companies formed a joint venture for the project , which they can be completed in seven years at an estimated $ 4.4 billion cost. The proposed location is near Sambhar Salt Lake in the state of Rajasthan.

Solar photovoltaic power plant will have an estimated life of 25 years and is expected to provide 6.4 billion kilowatt hours per year, according to official figures. It could help reduce emissions of carbon dioxide from India more than 4 million tons per year, according parimita Mohanty , a member of the Institute for Energy and Resources Institute (TERI ) in New Delhi.

India currently has a capacity of 2,208 MW of solar power connected to the grid - from a single 17.8 MW in 2010 , when the central government launched the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission ( JNNSM ) . On JNNSM targets India to reach an installed capacity of 20,000 MW (or 20 gigawatts ) of solar power by 2022 .

"If things go as planned , we could well exceed that figure ," said Tarun Kapoor , director of the JNNSM and co - secretary in the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy of India.

green ambition
The cost of solar energy production in India has fallen by more than half in recent years , from 17 rupees ($ 0.27) per kilowatt - hour ( kWh ), three years ago to Rs 7.50 kWh at present, according to Kapoor, and could fall further . But these costs are still high compared to coal (Rs 2.50 per kWh ), nuclear energy ( Rs 3 per kWh ) or natural gas ( 5.5 rupees per kWh ) , Mohanty said.

India is the mapping potential of solar energy throughout the country on the basis of satellite imagery in collaboration with the United States. It has also set up 51 ​​monitoring stations dedicated to assess the availability of solar radiation , the addition of data collected by 45 meteorological observatories.

But the mega - ostensibly green project has been criticized by environmentalists. " We do not think that should be the way to go forward," says Chandra Bhushan , deputy director general of the Center for Brain Science and Environment in New Delhi. " I Feeding 4,000 MW in a grid and leakage where you lose 20% of electricity losses and distribution of transmission [ more] eventually supply the urban centers makes little sense ," he said , adding that less than 50 % of Indians living in villages have access to electricity.

Bhushan said the solar decentralized approach , with multiple small projects in rural areas have a much wider wider social impact and benefit from greater human development as a gigantic power plant network . The population of India is comparable to China, but its energy consumption is only one fourth of China, according to the Energy Information Administration of the U.S. .

Rajendra Pachauri , Director General TERI and Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says JNNSM should continue to grow in both large-scale and decentralized approaches . "India has to emerge as the world leader in the use of solar energy technologies involving centralized power production , as well as millions of small decentralized applications . "...

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