Solar sector in India

First of all, this is a very important order and a reminder by APTEL and one hopes all regulatory commissions in India will take heed. Regulators need to take independent views, otherwise we would be reverting to the era when the State Energy Department or the Union Ministry of Power took all the decisions. Secondly, solar power should not depend on mandatory purchase obligations anymore and needs to be competitive. Government support to the solar power industry should be for R&D and not for subsidy.

This identifies the wrong path followed by the India. Advice is to learn from successful stories from around the world and adopt it to suit our conditions. For example Germany was successful in solar sector following FIT. Now they tries to reduce FIT. Japan, though a front runner in solar capacity till 2004, is at present behind several nations. Now Japan adopted FIT that is suitable to their vision (To overtake Germany) and decided highest FIT. Solar capacity added in one year is about 4000 MW.

India established Solar Energy Centre in 1982 and its contribution to solar sector is not in public domain. India had a vision to attain a solar installed capacity of 200 GW by 2050. But due to unknown reason the road map was not prepared to accomplish this target.
It is time India redesign the road-map visualizing the original target. In short the Solar policy (JNNSM) need to be restructured. Subsidy of any nature should be avoided and replace it with Feed in Tariff.