Friday, February 21, 2014: India’s grand plan to achieve 20 GW of solar capacity by 2022 saw a drop-back as the country is close to missing the current fiscal year deadline target. The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, reported that India installed only a total of 43 MW of off-grid photovoltaic (PV) during the first month in 2014.
The MNRE report states that the country installed only 28 MW of grid-tied solar PV capacity and 15 MW of off-grid PV during the month of January 2014. Apparently, India is falling behind on goals for on-grid solar PV deployment. Though the figures are close to meeting off-grid PV goals for the fiscal year.
India, now has 2.21 GW of grid-tied and 160 MW of off-grid solar capacity, among which the major installments have the PV set-up. The country has already achieved 88 per cent of the target for the current fiscal year, for off-grid PV. However, it could not manage half of target in the grid-tied project.
India installed 40,000 square meters of solar water heating collectors in January 2014, for a total of 510,000 square meters in the first ten months (fiscal) year 2013-14, which is in excess of the 500,000 square meters target. In a report by SolarServer, analyst firms like Mercom Capital LLC, US have blamed late roll-out of Phase 2 of India’s Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM), on the slowness in country’s PV market. Though, the market is expected to raise during this calendar year, as many projects are under way via various state programmes.
