By March 2012, the end of its fiscal year, India has committed to install 250 MW of photovoltaic systems—up from just 22 MW at the start of the year. As this growth is in keeping with India’s National Solar Mission, which aims to install 20 GW by 2022, the country's solar industry now seems set to take off.
Teething pains remain, however. “We are looking at capacity-building. Considering the technological content, we have to plan in a manner that is cost-effective,” said Anil Kakodkar, the newly appointed head of the National Solar Mission (NSM), at a January 2012 conference in Bangalore. An initial challenge, he said, was evaluating whether India’s large land surfaces and weather conditions would be suitable for solar installations. “I am afraid we have not fully understood this factor as yet,” he said.
In an auction, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has awarded photovoltaic contracts—largely in the desert state of Rajasthan—totaling 350 MW and worth $770 million to 28 developers. The project has an initial completion deadline of March 2013. Companies that signed the power purchase agreements included Azure Power India, Mahindra Solar One, French-Fonroche Energie and South Africa’s Solairedirect.