Tapta camee karabhaya haraye Visvakar mane |
Namastamo bhinighnaya rucaye lokasakshine ||
Salutations to you, possessor of the lustre of refined gold, destroyer of ignorance, the architect of the universe. Salutations to the destroyer of darkness, Splendor incarnate; the witness of the world.
A shloka from Aditya Stotram
Among the pantheon of Hindu gods – close to 30 million, according to claims – Surya has an unique and exalted position. The sun god is worshipped as one, ‘who knoweth all that lives’, and regarded as sustainer of life on our planet. In the Rig Veda there are quite a few hymns that elucidate the role played by Surya and implore him to continue his benign mercy. According to scriptures, Aditya Stotram (from which the above shloka has been quoted) was a prayer performed by Lord Rama, asking for power and energy to annihilate the evil hordes of Ravana and slay the demon king himself.
Not only for element worshipping Hindus; the sun was an important deity for the ancient Egyptians who worshipped him as Ra. It is said that the Greek city states were also in
some ways tapping the solar energy for their daily use and even for warfare. Remember the story on how Archimedes was able to burn ships with a very powerful convex lens that magnified the solar ray. Even during the medieval times, according to some researchers, as far back as 1447, Leonardo Da Vinci had predicted and prescribed the use of solar energy on a major scale for the sake of industrialization.
Thus, since time immemorial we have been looking up at the sun to give us power and energy to sustain our selves. The fact is true even today, in the age of supersonic jets and inter-planetary probes, we still look at sun to power our home appliances, office equipments, cars and what not. Much like Lord Rama did thousands of years ago, we are still looking at the sun, albeit instead of bowing our heads and cupping our hands, we have photovoltaic solar cells that do the same for us. The difference being now the worship is termed as clean energy or solar energy. And there are very pertinent reasons – more so for a developing nation like India – why quite like the ancients before us, we are again looking at the sun to save us.
Need for Solar
The past few years have been quite astonishing in terms of economic growth in India. With the economy growing at close to 9% y-o-y, everywhere around us are visible and tell-tale signs of this growth. But even as the those big expressways and massive glass buildings come up, there are serious questions that are being raised and need to be addressed; do we have the means to power this growth?
Considering the record high prices of oil, this growth puts added pressure on Indian infrastructure, especially the power sector. The gap between demand and supply widens as each new building comes up in Mumbai, Bangalore, Gurgaon or even Kochi. The result: acute power shortages, regular load shedding, erratic power supply or complete absence of it in rural sector. Enterprises, especially IT ones, have been under severe pressure to make arrangements for round-the-clock supply, so a big chunk of their operating costs goes into running generators or inverters.
But even these stop gap solutions are not enough, take the case of Mahindra Finance, because of its spread to small towns and city, Suresh Shanmugham, national head (IT), Mahindra Finance, needed to find a way so that all his field units were connected to the central one. His biggest issue was that of powering his branches. After much consideration, Shanmugham launched ‘“MF ESAVE – BITS’, a solar powered project within the company. “We have deployed schemes in utilizing the impact of power and value for life. further at remote locations, generate to save and use it to create an impact on the continuity of service and controls to enhance through the available models and methods, we have deployed solar power where we face problems in terms of electricity and empower the corporate customer centric desk with power to service and controls to be capture on time,’ he says. Something similar was undertaken by Bank of India as well (see the Case Study for further details). Of late, Shanmugham has become quite an expert on solar energy, doling out statistics and giving guidance on how to go solar.
Another recent addition to the ‘solar cult’ is Navtej Matharu, VP (IT), Infovision. His reasons for solar were quite different and quite the same like those of Mahindra Finance and Bank of India. As Infovision is a leading BPO company in India, Matharu’s biggest challenge is to power his company round the clock. Not only that, Matharu has also taken up the challenge of reducing the power bill of the company by close to 35-40% through various means. So, when Infovision decided to construct a new centre in Narnia, Haryana, he decided to look at alternative means like solar power as well. After much research and investigation, Matharu called in Sharp and started working out towards a solution with them.
“The biggest hindrance in going solar is the huge cost involved at the onset. It is a bitter pill to swallow, but once you have done that, there are immense paybacks that accrue from the same. For us, solar power is part of the overall drive to be more productive and also the fact that we are in some ways helping the environment by going clean. It is win-win deal,” he says.
Challenges and opportunities
Indeed like Matharu puts it, the biggest hindrance at the moment is the initial costs. Depending on the size and the quality of systems involved, it could easily run into a few millions of Rupees. Currently there are two companies, Tata-BP and Sharp that are able to provide complete solutions for solar energy. Of the two, Matharu vouches for Sharp, “they are more open to suggestions and keen to innovate depending on the requirements,’ he states.
One of the most common usage of solar power can be seen in terms of solar water heaters that are common in most of the hotels. But there are variety of ways in with it can be utilized. As India being a tropical nation, except for the 2-3 months of monsoon, there is in fact uninterrupted power supply almost round the year. The best part is that the cities that are truly in a power crisis, like Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai, are best suited for solar solution, given their geographic location. Like in Europe and the US, one sees the wind farms, there could be scores of such ‘solar farms’ in India, powering the companies.
Almost all the professionals that we spoke to, mentioned that the government needs to do a lot more towards tapping the sun, than just talking. While, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has initiated schemes and incentives – like subsidy, soft loan, confessional duty on raw material imports, excise duty exemption on certain devices/systems etc – to boost the production and use of solar energy systems; there is a lot more that needs to be done. For instance in 1996 Amoco/Enron Solar Power Development planned to build a 50 MW solar photovoltaic plant in the Thar desert near Jaisalmer in Rajasthan state.Two other projects were proposed, one a 50 MW photovoltaics plant and the other a 200 MW solar chimney. None of these have been completed.
There needs to be a massive investment in R&D for the development of solutions that are best-suited for Indian climate. While some initiatives have been undertaken by the IITs in India, they have been few and far between. While the government of India has been talking about power security through atomic power, et al, there is little attention paid to the most potent way of clean power generation, namely solar power.
The few times that the government has showed interest, it has really worked. SK Sehgal, GM (IT), talks of one such initiative by the Himachal Pradesh Government to promote solar cookers by subsidizing them. “These cookers were very popular and one could see scores of households using these cookers, imagine the kind of savings it must have resulted in and the positive ecological impact, not to mention,” he says.
In the end, it all boils down companies and individuals to take a lead, ‘solar cult’ members like Shanmugham, Kalyansundar, Matharu to work out solutions around solar energy. As Vishwajeet Singh, head (IT), Fcm Travels puts it. “Not only from the environment point of view, it is also beneficial from cost point of view. It is a rule that if you don’t address a problem today, it will force you to do it tomorrow. It is up to an organization to understand the criticality today and give the opportunity to their IT team to build a Green IT infrastructure,” he adds.
Coming to think of it, we seem to be constantly looking at the past for inspiration. The more that we embrace modernity, the more past-like we become. It is such a paradox, isn’t it? So like the ancient Indians, Egpytians, Greeks, Assyrians, and others, it is time we bowed our head in reverence to the mighty sun god and let’s ask him to power our lives and help us solve the single largest challenge in front of mankind: climate change.
(Shashwat DC. Published in Dataquest)
Some Quick facts on Solar Energy
- The sun receives enough energy from the sun in one hour to power the world’s population for a year.
- Enough energy reaches the earth each year to produce 1000 times more energy than is produced by burning fossil fuels.
- Shell has predicted that 50% of the world’s energy will come from renewable sources by 2040. Shell will also join in a massive renewable energy development project supported by the UAE. Several industrial heavyweights will join them: British Petroleum, Total, and Occidental Petroleum Corp, General Electric, Rolls Royce, Fiat and Mitsubishi
- In recent years manufacturing costs of photovoltaic cells has dropped by 3-5% per year while government subsidies have increased. While to some such facts about solar energy seem trivial, this makes solar energy an ever-more affordable energy source.
- The energy output of a 1 KW solar energy unit is roughly equivalent to the burning of 170 pounds of coal and 300 pounds of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere.
