And Now - A Sun-size Scam!

[Please click on the link http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/articleshow?msid=640963
"Punjab to get BHEL's solar powered pumps" about 700 SPV pumps to be supplied by Punjab Energy Devp Agency at a cost of Rs 19 Crore.]

This is indeed a scandalous profligacy and perhaps so timed to evade attention, given the election time issues. To spend such resources on freebies within the country's most prosperous agro belt and in a 100% electrified region, abundant with biomass and resources for power generation from more cost-effective technologies like waste-to-energy and gassifier-based generation is indeed state-sponsored blasphemy of the highest order!

India's SPV production is barely 20MW a year, while about half of this goes to critical applications in 'non-subsidy' sectors of defence, railways, oil exploration, telecom etc. This leaves less than 10 MW of panels for basic needs like village lighting, communication/ICT and safety annunciation in no-power zones.

At a system-level cost of Rs 500-600 per Peak-Watt and a high import content, these solutions need be spared only where the cost of NOT having ANY power is greater. Further, the effective 24-hr capacity is less than 20% of that installed, given that a SPV module delivers its rated power for only 4-5 hours on an average day in these regions. System efficiency is never better than 5%. The large starting currents of motors, multiple series-parallel interconnections and joints make SPV highly unreliable for large one-spot power requirements. These facts are well known and documented, given our 30-year old solar energy programme.

On the other hand, given Punjab's production of food-grain and therefore husk, that produces 1 KwH for every 1.5 Kg of it fed to a biomass gassifier, is itself a more economical and efficient alternative to driving engines of pumps or generators, let alone the other agricultural wastes like bagasse, that are anyway burnt to cause fire and pollution hazards.

Not only is this choking development, but thousands of women and children die or get blind and sick from kerosene fumes of lanterns and monoxides of crude hearths. The PM's 2002 I-Day promise of a solar lantern in every no-power village home remains largely fulfilled.

Such a profligacy can only be the result of a callous ego-centric bureaucracy that must sanction Crores if at all, if not the work of wheels within wheels. A thorough investigation and exposure is warranted.