TAPPING SOLAR ENERGY

India is a sunny country with a solar energy potential of 20 mw every square km. At present, only a tiny fraction of it is being tapped. Solar energy can be used directly in two forms – producing heat or light. Production of light and electric current from the sun’s rays uses ‘photovoltaic technology’, which involves direct conversion of sunlight into electricity.

The thermal form, which is used for cooking, water heating or purification, drying and fruit ripening, distillation or producing steam for power generation, is more economical. Solar cookers are already well-known and popular. Solar cooking has been recommended even in the Rig Veda which says: ‘All edibles ripened or cooked in the sun’s rays change into super medicine, the amrita”.

Solar energy has every thing to recommend it. Unlimited and non-polluting. It will neither drain our mineral resources nor submerge large tracts under dam waters. If only it could be tapped cheaply. That is what technicians are trying to do the world over.

New Schemes

The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy supports Research, Design and Development (RD&D) activities in New and Renewable Energy including solar energy in the country. Comprehensive guidelines for supporting and accelerating pace of Research, Design and Development leading to eventual manufacture and deployment of various Renewable Energy Systems including solar energy have been put in place.

An amount of Rs. 600 crore has been tentatively allocated for Research, Design and Development in the Energy Sector for the 11th Five Year Plan. During the last Five Year Plan period, Rs. 72.65 crore were spent for the same activities. The Ministry has financially sported about 600 RD&D Projects particularly in Solar Energy Sector.

New schemes have been launched by the Ministry in addition to implementation of ongoing schemes to encourage large-scale use of solar energy in the country during the 11th Five Year Plan Period. The new schemes include ‘Development of Solar Cities’ and ‘Demonstration Programme on MW size Grid Solar Power Generation’. In addition, Research and Development thrust areas for solar and other New and Renewable Energy Technologies for the 11th Five Year Plan period have also been identified and publicised through newspaper and website advertisements for further intensifying research and technology development in this area. Promotional measures taken by the Government and other associated agencies include publicity and awareness campaigns, amendment of building bye-laws for making the use of solar water heaters mandatory in certain categories of buildings, rebate in property tax/electricity tariff to the users of solar water heaters, etc.

Solar Energy Plants

The Ministry of New & Renewable Energy promoted deployment of nine Solar Energy Plants during 2007-08 in six States of the Country. Out of this, Maharashtra tops the list with three Plants where as Jammu & Kashmir got two such Plants. Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Orissa and West Bengal each got one power plant during this period. The total capacity sanctioned for these plants is less than 2000 kwp. The capacity under implementation is more than 800 kwp.

Out of different Plant Projects, all the six States have received one Solar Photovoltaic Power Plant Project. The State of West Bengal has been sanctioned highest capacity of 945.0 kwp followed by Chhattisgarh with 646.8 kWp. Besides these Jammu & Kashmir and Maharashtra, each have been sanctioned Building Integrated Power Plants (BIPV) with total sanctioned capacity of 18 kWp and one each SPV Power Pack of total sanctioned capacity of 8 kWp.

The Ministry is promoting deployment of solar photovoltaic power packs/plants in different parts of the country under various programmes including remote village electrification programme by providing partial financial support. These projects are implemented through the state implementing agencies in their respective states. The total funds released to the state agencies are to the tune of Rs. 40 crore which includes funds for four ongoing projects also. These projects are likely to be completed during 2008-09.

The projects for installation of solar photovoltaic power packs/plants are considered by the Ministry on the basis of proposals submitted by the States, as per provisions of the scheme and availability of funds.

Non-polluting, requiring little maintenance, free from wear and tear caused by moving parts, solar power is the most promising form of energy for the future.

Development and Promotion of Renewable Energy Sources

In the past century, it has been seen that the consumption of non-renewable sources of energy has caused more environmental damage than any other human activity. Electricity generated from fossil fuels such as coal and oil has led to high concentrations of harmful gases in the atmosphere. This has in turn led to many problems being faced today such as ozone depletion, global warming and climate change. Vehicular pollution has also been a major problem as well as buildings and houses guzzle energy which are alarming.
Under present scenario of sky rocketing price of crude oil and associated environmental problems renewable energy sources have become very important and relevant to today’s world. The focus of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy is on development and promotion of renewable energy sources to meet the energy requirements of various sectors.

Wind Energy
Wind, hydro, biomass and solar are the main renewable energy sources for grid interactive power. Globally, wind energy utilization is on an upbeat. Wind energy has posted, amongst all renewable energy sources the highest growth rates. Capacity addition is in the range of 1500 – 2000 MW per year over the past three years. India has maintained 4th rank in the world after Germany, Spain and USA. 1390 MW capacity addition this year has taken the overall contribution from wind energy to 7660 MW out of total contribution of about 11,000 MW to grid power from renewable. Power generation from wind energy has reached 8757 MW till 31st March, 2008.

Hydro-Electric Projects
The Ministry takes up Hydro-electric projects up to 25 MW capacity which have been categorized as Small Hydro Power (SHP) projects. At present, the Small Hydro Power Programme is being driven primarily by private investment. 162 megawatt small hydro power projects were commissioned in 2007 raising the cumulative achievement to 2180 MW. Main achievement in this area has been on canals of Karnataka and in hilly areas of Uttrakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh.

Biomass
Biomass has been one of the main energy sources for mankind since the dawn of civilization. Every year millions of tons of agriculture and forest residues are generated. These are either wasted or burnt inefficiently in their loose form causing air pollution. These wastes can be efficiently utilized for thermal use and power generation. 95 MW was produced from bio-mass/cogeneration (non-bagasse) and 100.11 MW has been produced from bio-mass gasifiers till 31.08.2008.Energy recovery from waste has reached 26.70 MW during the same period.
The Ministry has roped in industries for power generation. This is to meet their captive energy requirements, both power and heat energy. Twelve bio-mass co-generation projects based on rice- husk and others based on bagasse have been installed in paper mills and sugar mills in 2007. Small scale industries have also been included. A large number of biomass gasifiers were installed to provide power to small scale industries and for electrification of villages. Furnace oil replacement initiatives through thermal applications have started. Power generation from agro residues and plantations have reached 606 MW and bagasse co-generation has reached the level of 800MW till end of last financial year.

Waste-to-Energy Programme
The Ministry is also promoting power generation from different types of urban waste which include municipal solid waste, cattle manure, vegetable market waste, slaughter wastes, liquid waste from distilleries, poultry litter and Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs). The cumulative achievement under waste-to-energy programme, both from Grid Interactive Renewable Power and Captive- Combined Heat and Power(CHP), is 81.95 MW till March 2007.

Remote Village Electrification Programme
The Remote Village Electrification Programme (RVEP) and Village Energy Security Test Projects (VESPs) reach out to villages who are unlikely to receive grid-connectivity. These villages are not only electrified but they also have improved chulhas, biogas plants based on dung/oilcakes or leafy mass, bio-fuel based pump sets etc., 400 villages and hamlets have been provided lighting during 2007, their by taking cumulative achievements to 4198 villages and hamlets in the country.
A large number of decentralized renewable energy systems such as 40 lakh biogas plants, 14 lakh solar photovoltaic systems producing 120MW, 70474 solar street lighting system, solar water heating systems with collector area of 2.30 million square meters, large number of biomass gasifiers for rice mills, bakeries and other industries etc., have been promoted under various schemes.

New Schemes
The Ministry has launched three new schemes namely Demonstration programme on megawatt size grid interactive solar power generation, Development of solar cities and Energy recovery from municipal and urban waste. The target for Demonstration programme on megawatt size grid interactive solar power generation is 50 MW during XIth Plan Period where each MW of solar power is likely to generate 25 to 40 direct jobs and upto 400 indirect jobs it is expected that private sectors will invest Rs. 1000 crore in this sector. 60 cities will be covered under the new initiative of Development of solar cities during XIth Plan Period. The Ministry will provide financial assistance upto Rs. 50 lakhs under various schemes. Total 5 projects will be taken up in Public Private Partnership mode under Energy recovery from municipal and urban waste initiatives in coming years.

GRIHA
A green building depletes the natural resources to the minimum during its construction and operation. Keeping in view the Indian agro-climatic conditions and in particular the preponderance of non-AC buildings, a National Rating system – GRIHA – has been developed, which is suitable for all kinds of buildings in different climatic zones of the country. The Ministry signed a MoU with TERI on 1st November, 2007 for launching a National Rating System GRIHA for all kinds of buildings in different climatic zones of the country.
Apart from providing financial support, the Ministry also plays a key role in providing technical back-up for promoting renewable energy systems and devices through its specialized technical institutions, namely Solar energy Centre (SEC) and Centre for Wind Energy Technology (C-WET). The North East has been given a special focus for accelerated deployment of renewable energy systems and devices.
The Ministry celebrated a grand silver jubilee function at Vigyan Bhawan on 22nd November, 2007 on successfully completing 25 years of its service to the nation. President of India, Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil released four commemorative postal stamps on renewable energy on this occasion, along with a compendium titled “25 years of renewable energy in India”.
A development-cum-demonstration project for use of hydrogen (upto 30%) in CNG as a fuel for automotive vehicles (buses, cars and three wheelers) has been awarded to the society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), New Delhi, to get hands on experience on production, storage, transportation and utilization aspects of hydrogen as an automotive fuel. A MoU for implementation of the project was signed between Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, SIAM and IOCL. This is the first project to be implemented in public private partnership mode of funding in the area of hydrogen energy.

NMITLI Scheme

New Millennium Indian Technology Leadership Initiative (NMITLI) Scheme

As a part of New Millennium initiative, the Government mounted a farsighted R&D Programme named ‘New Millennium Indian Technology Leadership Initiative (NMITLI)’ in Public-Private Partnership mode in 2000-01. The programme was announced as part of the Union Budget in the year 2000. The responsibility of conceptualizing, evolving and implementing the programme has been assigned to the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR).

The trigger for NMITLI programme was:

• From incremental innovation to disruptive innovation;
• Tolerance for risk taking and failure;
• Best minds in India to take up the grand challenge for collaborative excellence; and
• Technology leadership.

The NMITLI focus is to:

• identify niche areas where India can gain leadership in about 10-15 years;
• develop projects involving best brains of the country through a rigorous process;
• build knowledge network of partners from public funded institutions and private industries;
• develop new methods of working together for collaborative excellence;
• focus on proof-of-concept; and
• provide a pipeline of cutting edge Indian innovation for conventional technology financing bodies as against the ‘usual safe bets.

Today, the New Millennium Indian Technology Leadership Initiative (NMITLI) is the largest public-private-partnership effort within the R&D domain in the country. It looks beyond today’s technology and thus seeks to build, capture and retain for India a leadership position by synergising the best competencies of publicly funded R&D institutions, academia and private industry. The Government finances and plays a catalytic role. It is based on the premise of consciously and deliberately identifying, selecting and supporting potential winners. NMITLI has carved out a unique niche in the innovation space and enjoys an excellent reputation.

NMITLI has so far evolved 57 largely networked projects in diverse areas viz. Agriculture & Plant Biotechnology, General Biotechnology, Bioinformatics, Drugs & Pharmaceuticals, Chemicals, Materials, Information and Communication Technology and Energy. These projects involve 80 industry partners & 270 R&D groups from different institutions. Approximately 1700 researchers are engaged in these projects. These 57 projects cumulatively have had an outlay of approximately Rs. 500 crore.

NMITLI Achievements:

The programme has generated about 100 international patents and 150 publications in peer reviewed journals. The important achievements are:

• Paradigm shift in leather processing-From chemical to biochemical route
• Pilot plants for separating cellulose, hemi-cellulose and lignin from bagasse
• Pilot plants for producing lactic acid from sugarcane juice
• Bio-informatics software viz. Bio-Suite, GenoCluster, Bio-SuiteC and Darshee
• Developed three variants of SofComp (Simple office Computer) devices including Mobilis
• Anti-psoriasis formulation in Phase-III Clinical Trial
• Lysostaphin in Phase-II Clinical Trial
• Anti-tuberculosis molecule in Phase-II Clinical Trial
• poly herbal formulations for diabetes, arthritis and hepatic disorder
• Micro-PCR based immuno-diagnostics for detecting eye infections
• Development of new plant varieties of Mentha piperita
• Development of Triple-Play broadband technology

Key components of CCEA Note:

Enthused by the success of the programme and on the recommendations of several committees, Government has approved the expansion of NMITLI programme to experiment newer models of innovation development. The key components of the proposal are:

Funding along with industry (50:50 Initiative)

There are many Indian companies who are doing financially very well but do not have the necessary expertise and intellectual resources to develop focused network projects for development of technologies/products in their line of activities. Their efforts need complementation from suitable R&D institutions and guidance from recognized peers to develop and commercialize newer technologies/products. Therefore, NMITLI will leverage its experiential base to encourage and assist such companies for developing network projects for those companies in product/technology development through a specific scheme called ‘NMITLI 50:50 initiative’.

Co-financing with Venture Capital funds

Many venture capitals are limited in scope and risk taking, due to lack of domain knowledge within the organization. Venture Capitals are therefore interested in joining hands with NMITLI, which has strong domain knowledge base, to jointly finance projects. Such projects would be identified and evolved following the procedures established by NMITLI. The funding would be joint with pre-determined ratio, but not more than 50% contribution from NMITLI. These projects are envisaged to be monitored by a joint team of experts as per the NMITLI monitoring mechanism. The proposed funding would follow the venture funding norms. The successes and failures resulting from the projects will be shared on equitable basis.

Setting up of NMITLI innovation centres in selected areas for long term sustained efforts

Some areas need long term sustained support with requisite human resource as well as infrastructure, assembled at one place to cross the threshold of intellectual barrier in order to generate globally competitive technologies and products, IPR, and high quality publications. It is envisaged to set up ‘NMITLI Innovation Centres’ in PPP mode for sustained efforts in some selected areas for example, Photovoltaics, Fuel Cells, White LEDs, Industrial Enzymes, Medical Implants, Vaccine development, Seed Development etc.

Support to post NMITLI projects

Despite the excellent R&D and developments, the technologies and products developed in the laboratory do need market seeding, pilot plant studies to refine the development. The companies need CSIR’s hand holding to develop and package the technologies/products further. The concept of ‘Post-NMITLI’ will fulfill the objective of providing financial and technical assistance for pre-commercialization related activities such as scale up, pilot plants, field trials, market seeding of products, market surveys, etc.

Acquisition of early stage relevant knowledge / IP for portfolio building

External ideas / leads / IP acquisition are assuming greater significance in the chain of innovation and mind to market. The availability of a large number of unencumbered IP (being developed in several laboratories globally) is providing a fillip to this approach. Several countries across the globe are striving to take advantage of the diversity of creativity available in different parts of world and integrate with its own developments to bring out new products / processes for global competitiveness. Since NMITLI aims to provide the Technological Leadership to the Indian industry, it becomes imperative for NMITLI to adopt such practices to achieve its objectives. Such acquisitions shall be in chosen areas with a view to creating a portfolio where NMITLI projects are in operation.

Crossing the geographical boundaries

It is increasingly being felt that to achieve leadership in niche technology areas, relying totally on internal expertise and capabilities may not be adequate. To achieve the objective of global leadership, it would be helpful to broaden the programme by bringing in international expertise. The international expertise may be in the form of expert advise of international experts at various stages of project development and implementation, involving international companies for product/technology development and commercialization at global scale, and engaging research institutions and/or CROs across the globe where Indian expertise need outside complementation.

Joint development and support of projects with other departments of science and technology as well as economic ministries

Many government departments are engaged in research and development activities in areas of relevance to them. These activities often have considerable degree of overlap with other scientific departments. However, these departments’s expertise is limited to undertake multi-disciplinary projects in cutting edge areas requiring wide-spectrum of intellectual and infrastructural inputs. Such multi-disciplinary areas need expertise, inputs and concerted efforts from all concerned government departments to generate IPR, technologies and products besides high quality publications. Therefore, part of the NMITLI funds will be utilized to generate inter-departmental projects in the XI FY Plan. The proposed scheme apart from generating intellectual capital, technologies and products in cutting edge areas would act as a catalyst to bring better co-ordination among various departments of government in the R&D sphere.

Relaxing the condition of more than 50% shareholding by Indians/Non-resident Indians

Many oversees companies through their R&D efforts using local resources, produce goods for local as well as overseas consumption and are thus contributing to the growth of Indian economy. They also employ Indian workforce. In some areas, such companies are better equipped to upscale the technology/products and sell it under their brand name. Further, they can become a vehicle for taking Indian technologies and products into global market easily thereby contributing more to Indian economy. The provision permits relaxation of the condition of more than 50% shareholding by Indians/Non-resident Indians to become an industrial partner in NMITLI projects.

Flexibility to convert loan into equity

Launching a new product or setting a knowledge based new venture requires investment on many fronts particularly for capital-intensive infrastructure, manpower, technology costs, working capital etc. Governments all over the world, particularly in developed countries endeavor to support entrepreneurs in different ways to ease the burden of initial investment. The industrial partner under NMITLI has to invest for commercialization of technology/products and at the same time has to return the loan to CSIR albeit in installments. This burden of loan repayment can be further reduced by converting loan into equity. Therefore, with this provision and on the request of industrial partner, loan given to it may be converted into equity.

Advantages of NMITLI Expansion:

As others are emulating, NMITLI is endeavoring to position higher in the innovation development. The proposal will therefore:

• enable CSIR to experiment newer models of innovation development in Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) mode, which could later become models for others to emulate;
• encourage to develop products / processes based on innovation and thereby help Indian industry emerge as a technology leader in the identified domain;
• encourage venture capital funds to venture into more risky R&D areas;
• act as a catalyst to bring better co-ordination among various departments of government in the R&D sphere and avoid unnecessary duplication, apart from generating intellectual capital, technologies and products in cutting edge areas; and
• enhance national competitiveness.

Source : Press Information Bureau
Date : February 27, 2009