Australian Expertise in Rooftop Solar can aid India’s Renewable needs – Piyush Goyal

Recently, at the roundtable of ‘Renewable Energy Challenge for Grid Integration’, Power Minister Piyush Goyal pronounced “Australia’s rooftop solar expertise has to be looked into to transfer technology at affordable rates expanding renewable energy in India.”

The minister said, “India can use Australian expertise in rooftop solar as almost a third of Australian homes in some states are using rooftop solar.”

The Australian expertise in scheduling and forecasting solar generation to enable grid integration would be “welcomed by Indian companies”, the minister said.

“It is crucial for the prices of renewable energy to be comparable to coal-based thermal power to be viable in India,” he said.

While reiterating on making the technology transfers affordable, Goyal said that the Australian technology can help in efficient renewable power and grid integration in India. The technology transfer should be through strong educational and research collaboration between Australian (UNSW) and Indian organisations like National Institute of Solar Energy (NISE). Goyal further said that in view of land availability challenges in India, renewable technologies which reduce land requirement would be welcome. He further said that cost challenges can be met through ‘Make in India’. This will help in achieving the ideal combination of Indian manpower and Australian innovation.

Lauding that India is undergoing big expansion of renewable energy, New and Renewable Energy Joint Secretary Tarun Kapoor said, “India was running the world’s largest renewable energy programme and was looking for technological expertise, operating experience and investments.” This has provided a huge opportunity for global firms to operate at a large scale and provide cost competitive solutions.

He also highlighted that by March 2016 itself, India would bid out more than 18 gigawatts (GW) of solar capacity thus helping it move rapidly towards the aim of setting up 100 GW of solar capacity by 2022.