Monday, March 24 2014: The Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM) was launched with an aim to settle the energy crisis in the country, and further adopt cleaner sources of power generation. It has been three years after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh declared the ambitious programme to generate 20,000MW of solar power by 2022. Conclusive estimates since round up the JNNSM’s achievement at 252.5MW, as against to the target of 1100MW in 2010-2013.
With delays, trade disputes and competition from state-level schemes, the government of India’s (GOI) programme has been found to lend only one-third of the country’s total solar power capacity. According to an ET report, Sunil Jain, managing director at Hero Future Energies said, “The programme is losing on time and offering small capacities. There is no long-term visibility on the central plan.” Hero Future is the renewable energy arm of Hero Group.
The first phase of JNNSM (from 2010-2013) contributed 252.5MW of solar power generation capacity. Currently, in the second phase (from 2014-2017) that has already been delayed by a year to bgin with, GOI is said to add 10,000MW of solar energy capacity. The addition will be in both photovoltaic (PV) and concentrated solar power (CSP) or solar thermal technology. JNNSM failed by a margin of more than 800MW in the first phase.
The total solar power capacity in India is 2208MW, of which 661MW is imparted via GOI’s JNNSM. “The solar mission would hopefully add around 800 MW this year and all states combined are expected to add another 600 MW. So, we are looking at a miniscule 1500 MW of capacity addition in solar this year and all this after when three years of the mission have already been consumed,” Jain said.
