The increase in power generation capacity, coupled with improvement in transmission infrastructure, is helping the country reduce its average duration of power cuts. In May, there were 7.45 hours of power cut across the country on an average. The figure is 61% lower than a year ago. Average power cut duration in UP came down to 7.11 hours in May, from 166.31 hours a year ago. The situation in Bihar improved to 12.05 hours from 54.51 in May 2016.

Haryana and Manipur also improved significantly by 73% and 59% to 34.24 hours and 41 hours, respectively. However, the average number of power cuts on an all-India basis inched up to 10.98 power in May from 10.44 a year ago. FY17 witnessed the lowest ever deficit both in terms of meeting energy requirement (-0.7%) and peak demand (-1.6%).

Source:  http://www.financialexpress.com/india-news/power-cut-duration-falls-61-in-may/747702/

From the humble Maruti-800 to the Rs 2.62 crore BMW i8 hybrid, Sachin Tendulkar has seen, driven and owned them all.

The cricket legend has now thrown his weight behind the government’s plan to have an all electric car fleet by 2030 in India, saying the present generation has a responsibility to look after the planet and hand it over to the next in a better shape.

Although the road to having environment-friendly mobility solutions is going to be long and winding, Tendulkar believes that it is never too soon to make a start with real intent.

“It is about looking after the planet. It becomes our responsibility to look after the planet and make sure that when the next generation takes over, it is in better shape,” Tendulkar told PTI.

He was responding to a query on his views on alternative fuels and environmental-friendly mobility solutions, considering rising concerns over pollution in India.
Referring to the government’s initiative to have an all electric car fleet by 2030, he said it was a step in the right direction.

“I think the world is going in that direction,” he said.

Yet, the master blaster, known for his whirlwind run scoring, sees the journey to eco-friendly vehicles being more like playing a long innings in a Test match.

“That process is a lengthy process, change is not going to happen overnight. Results are not going to happen overnight … (but) somewhere, we need to start and we need to have that intent. As long as we all are moving in the right direction results will follow,” Tendulkar said.
Being an automobile enthusiast himself, he said electric vehicles can also provide what normal internal combustion engines offer.

Recollecting his experience of driving the i8 hybrid, Tendulkar said the electric motor of the car can offer power for sudden acceleration like other normal ‘muscle cars’.

“My experience with i8 has been fabulous. It has something to it because of the way it handles, power for sudden accelerations, instant braking and it’s light weight,” he said.

He expressed optimism that with “many experienced brains working in finding the right solution”, expensive technologies such as the one used in i8 hybrid could make their way to mass market vehicles over a period of time.

In April this year, Power Minister Piyush Goyal had said that the government was looking at having an all electric car fleet by 2030 with an objective of lowering fuel import bill and running cost of vehicles.

Policy think-tank Niti Aayog has also proposed giving both fiscal and non-fiscal incentives and subsidies to push sales of electric vehicles while discouraging the use of petrol and diesel-run vehicles.

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/auto/cars/sachin-tendulkar-bats-for-electric-cars-backs-govt-move/articleshow/59408793.cms

Coal India Ltd, the world’s largest miner of the dirty fuel, will generate 1 gigawatt (GW) of renewable electricity this year as part of its plan to produce as much as 10GW clean power in total, Piyush Goyal, minister for coal, power and renewable energy, said on Thursday.

State companies such as Coal India and NTPC Ltd, the country’s biggest thermal power producer, are planning to aggressively spend on solar projects under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s personal push for renewable energy.

“This is a contribution towards a better planet, towards greening the country and greening the world,” said Goyal at an event.“It’s a little bit of a contradiction that I have to keep the coal industry also going while I ensure large-scale outreach in the renewable sector …”

He did not give a timeline for Coal India’s 10GW target.

The renewable energy industry is already booming in India. Solar power generation capacity has more than tripled in three years to over 12GW, as Modi targets raising energy generation from all renewable sources to 175GW by 2022.

Indian solar power plant developers—including companies backed by Japan’s Softbank and Goldman Sachs—are meanwhile quoting ever-lower tariffs in auctions to win big projects, raising the possibility of clean power outpricing fossil fuel energy in the near future even without direct government subsidy.

“Certainly in the long run renewable energy will be far cheaper than thermal power,” Goyal said.Reuters

Source:  http://www.livemint.com/Industry/M4okzqhQ4UyttDU4wzeNLM/Coal-India-betting-big-on-renewables-Piyush-Goyal.html

Indian Railways is going all out to reduce its fuel costs and adopt solar power in a major way. Apart from planning large-scale solar power projects and rooftop solar power systems, the world’s fourth-largest railway network is planning to install solar panels on top of coaches.

Indian Railways has floated a tender for installation of solar panels atop 250 trains to power fans and lighting systems. The tender, according to media reports, would require winning companies to install battery systems in addition to solar panels.

Companies selected through the tender process will be required to install flexible solar panels and battery systems on six trains on experimental basis. These trains will be put into commercial operations and performance of the panels and batteries would be tested for a period of two months before a decision on large-scale implementation is taken.

Indian Railways, through the mandate of the central government and its own target to shift to clean energy sources in the long-term, has taken numerous initiatives in the recent past. A study by the United Nations Development Program stated that Indian Railways could source as much as 25% of its energy needs from renewable energy sources by 2025.

The Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) has found that Indian Railways could set up 5 gigawatts of solar power capacity, through rooftop and utility-scale projects, to significantly increase its consumption of renewable energy over the next few years.

The study by CEEW shows that 3,900 megawatts of utility-scale projects and 1,100 megawatts of rooftop projects can be installed by the Indian Railways with an estimated investment of $3.6 billion. Last year, the Indian Railways joined hands with UNDP to execute plans to set up 5,000 megawatts of solar power capacity.

Earlier this year, the Indian government announced a major push by Indian Railways in the rooftop solar power market, perhaps the largest in India and the world!

The Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley announced that the 7,000 railway stations across the country will be fed with solar power as per the Indian Railways mission to implement 1,000 megawatts of solar power capacity. The minister made the announcement during the union budget speech on 1 February 2017.

The minister stated that work to set up rooftop solar power systems at 300 stations has already started, and soon this number will increase to 2,000 stations. According to data released by the Minister of Railways, India had 7,137 railway stations at the end of March 2015.

In the large-scale solar power market, Indian Railways is looking to adopt the model used by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC), India’s largest subway system. DMRC has signed a power purchase agreement of around 200 megawatts with Rewa Solar Power Park located about several hundred kilometers away.

The Indian Railways has approached the government of Madhya Pradesh with a proposal to set up a mega solar power park with a capacity of 700-800 megawatts (MW). The project will come up at Shajapur, a few hundred kilometres east of the Rewa solar power park which received the lowest-ever tariff bid ever in India.

Source: https://cleantechnica.com/2017/06/22/indian-railways-will-install-rooftop-solar-panels-250-trains/

Arunachal Pradesh chief minister Pema Khandu today said the rural electrification programme will be taken up in the state “on a mission mode”.

To fulfil the mission, the power department has drawn a schedule to cover the villages not yet electrified by December 2017.

Khandu’s assertion came when Rural Electrification Corporation Limited (REC) chairman and managing director P.V. Ramesh, along with his team of officers, called on Khandu at his office here today.

During the meeting, Khandu discussed the work being carried out under Deendayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojna in the state and assured complete support of the state government for the rural electrification work.

Arunachal Pradesh has 1,230 un-electrified villages. Under the rural electrification scheme, 335 of these villages will be provided electricity through grids while 895 villages will be provided electricity through solar installations.

The government has signed over 100 MoUs with both public and private developers but most of the projects have not been started.

Power, healthcare and road connectivity remain a huge challenge for the Khandu government in the frontier state.

The visiting team told Khandu about eight villages – six in Anjaw and two in Dibang Valley – being electrified this month.

Khandu told the commissioner (power) that he will hold a review meeting in the first week of July and asked for regular updates on the status of rural electrification work.

Source: https://www.telegraphindia.com/1170623/jsp/northeast/story_158256.jsp

State-run Rural Electrification Corp today said as many as 13,685 villages have been electrified till June 20, 2017.

The Rural Electrification Corp is the nodal agency for Deendayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY), which is an integrated scheme covering all aspects of rural power distribution viz. feeder segregation, system strengthening and metering.

The scheme is aimed at transforming the lifestyle of villagers and bringing in overall socio-economic development in rural areas.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his Independence Day address to the nation on August 15, 2015, pledged to electrify all 18,452 un-electrified villages within 1,000 days.

Thereafter, the REC had taken up village electrification on a mission mode targeting the project completion by May 2018.

The DDUGJY has an outlay of Rs 43,033 crore with a grant of Rs 33,453 crore from the Government of India.

New projects for 32 states/UTs including works of feeder separation, system strengthening, connecting rural households, metering, village electrification and Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana worth Rs 42,553.17 crore have been approved.

More than 350 Gram Vidyut Abhiyantas (GVA) have been deployed to monitor the progress of village electrification. The GVAs update field photographs, data and other information in the GARV Mobile App (garv.gov.in), which has been developed for ensuring transparency and accountability. PTI KKS MKJ

Source: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/rec-says-13685-villages-electrified-so-far/1/983389.html

In 2015, at the climate talks in Paris, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi spearheaded the launch of an international solar alliance to raise $1 trillion to light up the developing world. Eighteen months later, Modi has turned promise into action.

India, a country of 1.3 billion people, is becoming perhaps the world’s best example of the revolution in green energy.

“It’s happening faster than anybody expected, because it was a gigantic promise,” says international environmental reporter Stephen Leahy, who has been writing about the energy transition in India for National Geographic.

“Many people were skeptical that they could deliver, but in just these last two years they have done remarkable things, in terms of creating a new approach to bringing energy to an awful lot of people,” Leahy says. “People thought that even if India [tried], they couldn’t do it this quickly. The perception of India may be that it’s a bureaucratic government that takes a long time to make decisions, that there’s lots of red tape, but that seems not to be the case when it comes to this.”

Leahy says India is acting, in part, because it is so vulnerable to the weather changes created by climate disruption.

“They’ve got water shortages. They’ve had huge heat waves that killed hundreds of people. They’ve got the sea-level rise issue, with most of the coastal areas. There are threats to their monsoon, which their agriculture is completely dependent upon,” he says. “There are a whole range of real impacts already happening to India right now, and it’s only going to get worse in the future.”

For India, the beauty of renewable energy is it’s cheaper, and it’s decentralized, Leahy says. In remote areas, where people have no electricity at all, “it’s much easier to install a small solar panel setup or a couple of wind turbines to provide energy,” he notes.

The other aspect that doesn’t get as much attention is water usage, Leahy says. Coal uses billions of gallons of good, quality water to provide electricity, while solar and wind require almost none. In a country without sufficient water to grow its crops, this is a major benefit.

India’s massive market has helped drive down the costs of renewable energy, Leahy says. Globally, prices have been falling year after year, and right now, India is getting a lot of financing from banks and financial institutions who see there’s money to be made.

“This isn’t a charity project. This is a moneymaking venture for a lot of companies,” Leahy points out. “Those folks who are installing renewables are power companies who are borrowing money — millions of dollars — from banks, and they are planning on making some profits off of this.”

India has seen other benefits to renewable energy, too, Logan says. Right now, the country loses about 30 percent of the energy it generates, because of transmission line losses. By having decentralized solar power and wind, they’ve cut these losses and seen big savings in energy and money.

A primary difference between India and countries like the US is that India wants to use coal to supplement its renewable energy, rather than the other way around. India’s energy minister, Piyush Goyal, has said that India plans to build no more new coal plants for the next decade. They will complete the few that are currently under construction. In the interim, they are hopeful that they can slowly develop better batteries capable of storing renewable, intermittent energy.

“That technology has been a bit expensive, but it’s coming along very quickly, as well, in terms of lower cost,” Leahy says. “So, in the future, they’ll be able to store renewable energy, and that will mean they can wean themselves off coal.”

India plans to add 160 gigawatts of renewable energy over the next four years and may reach that goal even sooner, Leahy says. By comparison, the US in 2015 had just over 100 gigawatts in solar and wind power, which took several decades to build out.

Can (or will) the US learn anything from India’s energy transformation? Leahy hopes so.

“They should understand that going back to coal is not the answer, that the day of fossil fuels is over, and that even a developing country with all sorts of social and other issues can make this rapid transition to renewable energy for the benefit of its citizens and for the benefit of their economy,” Leahy says. “They’re building a 21st-century economy around renewable energy.”

Source: https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-06-14/indias-renewable-energy-revolution-racing-ahead

All large ‘Gaushalas’ across thecountry will soon have their own biogasification equipment and bottling unit to make good use of bio waste, New and Renewable Energy Minister Piyush Goyal said today.

“I have instructed officials to come up with an improvised scheme, which will help Gaushalas to make good use of cow dung for generating biogas,” Goyal said while answering a question during a video conference.

He said bio waste has huge potential, which can generate biogas usable for cooking food. It can also help Gaushalas earn some money, he added.

On solar energy front, the minister said that if Rajasthan government waives of intra-state transmission charges, solar energy sector can attract investment in Rajasthan, which will generate income and employment and benefit other states as well.

The minister hailed the achievements and initiatives ofthe Ministry of Power, Coal, New and Renewable Energy made in the last three years.

“Achieving 24×7 affordable clean power for all and ensuring optimum utilisation of natural resources are critical for ‘Ujwal Bharat’.
“Over the past three years, the ministry has madeconsiderable progress towards achieving this goal under theleadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi,” Goyal said.

Source:  http://energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/power/gaushalas-to-have-their-own-bio-gasification-equipment-piyush-goyal/59112705

Power reached Majra Faqeer Khera village in Mohanlaganj area of state capital 69 years after independence. Villagers danced when the first bulb was switched on in the house of a villager Bechan.

The village finally became one of hundreds of villages across the country that has been provided electricity for the first time since independence in a special drive to electrify all the villages of state.
On the first day, 35 connections to BPL families and 1 to APL family was given, said GM LESA Ashutosh Srivastava who adopted the village and ensured power lines within 20 days of adoption of village.

“ I have directed all the engineers to adopt a village in their respective areas which do not have power yet. However, in this village under Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana of the centre, only Rs 21 lakh were spent for creating the power infrastructure ,” said Srivastava.

For Bitana Devi 31, Electrification means a lot as her son can study any time he wants. “My son, a student of Class 5 was not able to study at nights. Now he can do so,” she said.

Shatrughan, 59, another resident, said, “ We have studied and spent our lives using lanterns. Now our kids can live a better life.”

Chandan, a shop owner said, “ Earlier our day started with sun rise and finished with sunset but now we will have a life after sunset too. Electrification will help students, traders and farmers in increasing their output.

Gaj Prasad cleaned his refrigerator today which he received in his marriage as a gift from his in laws five years back. H would be able to use it at last, he said, adding gleefully, “Now we can drink chilled water and save our food from rotting.”

Source:  http://www.hindustantimes.com/lucknow/faqeer-khera-electrified-69-years-after-independence/story-C9PgkgJVfvsB0gTXq5VdiP_amp.html