Market Research Reports - Ken Research India Power Generation Sector Research Report

India Encourages the Evolution in Solar Power Infrastructure: Ken Research
India is the world’s second-most populous nation with huge energy requirements. The
country’s coal demand would actually zero out in the near future due to the technology driven
changes that are happening quickly than predicted. India is the world’s third-largest carbon
emitter and basically relies on coal-fired power plants for the production of most of its energy.
The ever growing population and a fast-industrializing economy are the major factors that
witness a whooping consumption of energy. Coal consumption in India has slowed down to its
lowest level in the past two decades although Indian economy is growing at a consistent pace.
The latest energy developments include improvements in renewable energy capacity and new
innovative procedures to improve energy efficiency. The Energy and Research Institute (TERI) in
New Delhi states that the energy efficiency is growing rapidly than estimated. Due to negligible
growth in generating electricity, low profitable power distribution, political obstacles and slash
on electricity subsidies is affecting the growth in electricity demand in the country.
The dropping costs for solar and wind energy and high enthusiasm for hydropower has
increased the renewable energy generating capacity and is also expected to increase by the
year 2030. With the improvement in battery technology that would enable weather and time
dependent solar and wind power to serve as round-the-clock power sources will help reduce
coal use in the power generation sector in India. The battery price has already fallen and was
estimated to reduce further. This trend will encourage the solar power with battery storage
that will be cheaper than coal-fired power.
India’s installed power plants capacity and power generation are using various fuel types such
as thermal conventional, nuclear, large solar thermal and renewable energy sources. The
renewable power sources are wind (both onshore and offshore), solar photovoltaic (PV),
concentrated solar power (CSP), small hydro power (SHP), biomass, biogas and geothermal. The
renewable power market includes hydro, small hydro, biopower and solar thermal energy
resources. The leading players in the solar thermal power in India are Reliance Power Limited,
Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Ltd., KVK Energy & Infrastructure Pvt. Ltd. and LANCO
Infratech Limited. The latest solar electricity price per unit was reduced compared to the recent
years and the Indian government has raised its solar capacity target to 100GW by the year
2030.
According to the study “Solar Thermal Power in India, Market Outlook to 2030, and Update
2017-Capacity, Generation, Power Plants, Regulations and Company Profiles”, in India around
65GW of new thermal power plants are already in the pipeline along with new solar plants. This
scenario threatens a rise in power surplus at a time of moderate growth in this sector and will
follow a collapse in plant load factor (PLF). Therefore, the collapse in PLF can bankrupt many
projects burdening the lenders. Majority of the banks in India are already under enormous bad