Emerging Issues

In the increasingly knowledge-driven economy, emerging trends are key consideration in day-to-day business decisions. New products, technologies and creative designs appear almost daily on the market and are the result of continuous human innovation and creativity. Being a guiding force behind all such innovations, researchers and investorsneed to always fully exploited the new technology developments or transferred to India. These emerging trends can help and safeguard their eforts. Following are some issues with respect to renewable energy which are to be considered while studying emerging trends.

A target of 10 000 MW capacity additions from renewables has been set for 2002 - 12 for India, of which 2600 MW has been achieved in the first three years of the Eleventh Plan. Projects aggregating to about 7400 MW are to be set up in next seven years. Purchase of electricity by distributing companies would sooner or later be through a competitive bidding process. Eventually, renewable electricity would need to compete with conventional electricity. The challenge to mainstream new and renewable power in terms of reliability, quality, and cost can be met to a large extent by addressing issues pertaining to the need to lower the cost of equipment, increase its reliability, and set up projects in areas which give the maximum advantage in terms of capacity utilization.

The main issue is how renewable power projects can be made cost competitive and more reliable, and a target of over 7000 MW be achieved in next seven years. The areas, which require attention to achieve this, need to be evolved and acted upon. Some of them are given below.

Mapping of potential
Indigenous technology development
Standards and performance testing
Cost

- Mapping accurately the entire potential of renewable energy resources in the country and classify them to give maximum advantage in terms of capacity utilization. This will help in opening new sites with higher returns and low risk.

- Classification of potential sites in each state based not only on project capacity but also on capacity utilization factor and available infrastructure, evacuation facilities, etc., to facilitate commercial development.

- Intensifying micro-siting for wind power projects, detailed survey and investigation in the case of small hydro, and assessing availability of biomass within a reasonable project area to improve economic viability of the power projects

- Identifying wastelands with a view to address production side of biomass for biomassbased power projects.

Indigenous technology development

- To sustain accelerated deployment of renewable energy based power projects indigenous design, development, and manufacturing is necessary. The industry should become internationally competitive. Standards, specifications, and performance parameters of indigenously developed products and services should be at par or even excel international levels.

- The import component in bigger capacity wind turbines and in small hydro projects needs to be reduced. The objective should be state-of-the-art technology with indigenous efforts. Areas of research to fully indigenous technologies need be identified with the help of industry and supported by the government.

- Automation in all power projects is considered essential in order to optimize generation and resource utilization. Focused attention is necessary to address this requirement and plan future projects /equipment design accordingly.

Standards and performance testing

- Grid-power projects should be constructed with equipment following international/ national standards and code of practices. This is essential for reliability and long life of the projects.

- It would be necessary to evaluate the projects through performance testing as per DPR parameters. Necessary facilities for this have been created. This is considered necessary to bring about contractual discipline, transparency, and quality assurance with respect to equipment.

- The equipment manufacturers should make due and adequate provisions for testing in the design and manufacturing of equipment.

Cost

- The cost of electricity generation from renewable energybased power projects has to be aligned with that of competing conventional sources.

- The cost of equipment has to be benchmarked to international levels. Further, such equipment has to be manufactured at par with international standards, specifications, and performance parameters.

- Expensive imports have to be replaced by indigenous development.