Dr. Farooq Abdullah Unveils Guidelines of Schemes under Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission

Energetica-India : International Magazine on Renewable & Conventional Power Generation | Transmission | Distribution

The Minister pointed out that merely by distributing solar lanterns in remote areas and to nomadic populations, we can light up over a million homes. Similarly 1 million streetlights can illuminate streets in over one lakh villages. These efforts, he said, will also save the environment as 10 million lanterns can save 50 crore litres of kerosene in a year, which in turn can mitigate a potential subsidy bill of Rs. 1,000 to 1,500 crores in a year. Further, the huge entrepreneurial potentialities thrown up by the rapid adoption of these systems will create thousands of jobs as well as self-employment opportunities

Shri Solanki said that to ramp up capacity of grid-connected solar power generation to 1000 MW within three years – by 2013; an additional 3000 MW by 2017 through the mandatory use of the renewable purchase obligation by utilities backed with a preferential tariff are the programmes on the agenda. He said this capacity can be more than doubled – reaching 10,000 MW installed power by 2017 or more, depending upon the enhanced and enabled international finance and technology transfer. The ambitious target of the Mission for 2022 of 20,000 MW or more, will be dependent on the ‘learning’ of the first two phases, which if successful, could lead to conditions of grid-competitive solar power