Excellent Article in The Deccan Chronicle - Come On, India, Take This Challenge Up!

India is a country where most parts get well over 6 hours of sunshine a day for 300 plus days a year. There is huge potential in the country to not only generate electricity using the light of the sun, but also to cut down sharply on hydrocarbon fuel imports, of which India is one of the biggest in the world. The positive thing about this is that current Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, is a huge supporter of solar power. He is also someone who loves a challenge. Hopefully, this will ensure that he takes the challenge of doing what Chile is doing wholeheartedly, and brings India to the very top among nations generating electricity from the light of the sun!

Solar Power Would Make So Much More Sense in Countries like India . . .

COurtesy Newsy. I am not sure how Newsy calculates the payoff time for solar PVs, but my guess is that they are taking a 3 hours a day, 250 days a year calculation. Countries like India and it's neighbors that are bathed in sunshine, could easily generate solar power for 325 days a year, and 6 hours a day. At prices now around $0.55 a watt for PVs, and battery prices constantly coming down, it should be possible for sunnier climes to have Energy Payback Times (the time taken for the price of electricity in the market to completely pay off the cost of the solar infrastructure) of less than 24 months, in fact. Train stations and platforms, malls and large office buildings, large apartment complexes etc would be the best places to put PVs up, especially to substitute grid generated power during the daytime. If a 20 to 30% reduction in grid supplied electricity is achieved at heavy use locations, that would reduce the stress on the mainly coal fired powerplants that supply daytime electricity, and bring overall costs down sharply. Someone just needs to do the job.