German major to set up plant in India

Bangalore, July 31: German multinational in the renewable energy space, "Conergy" is all set to set up solar power plant in India to tap the growing demand for non conventional energy in the country.

With a huge potential of over 81,000 MW the country currently had an installed capacity of around 4,000 MW, the 1.25 billion Euros company will in a couple of months zero in on the location as it was scouting various states including Karnataka.

Conergy which made its Indian entry early this year has a most modern 200 mw plant for photovoltaic systems back home. ''We will start with a modest capacity intially and build on it'' Mr Christian Langen, Member of the Board of Conergy told sources in an interview.

Mr Langen said initially the company would support off-grid or standalone solar thermal or photovoltaic power plants and later look to have grid support. He said the company which produced about 700 to 800 mw of renewable energy equipment last year forecast a bright potential in India where the renewable energy market was growing by 35 per cent annually. This growth could be further enhanced if the costs were brought down, he said adding that the photovoltaic power system provided by his company had an 17 per cent conversion rate as against the current available 12 per cent conversion rate in India.

According to Union Secretary for new and renewable energy V Subramanian renewable energy technologies had contributed 10,400 MW of power in the country of which over 6000 MW was added in the tenth five year plan period itself.

For the eleventh plan an additional capacity of 14,000 Mw had been planned through renewbale eenergy technologies, with an aggregate capacity of 200 MW proposed for solar energy technologies.

The Department had proposed an allocation of Rs 2,500 crore for renewable enmergy sources development during the eleventh five year plan.

Conergy, through its subsidiary Sun Technics had installed hybrid power systems in 83 platfroms of ONGC. The combination of power plants included solar photovoltaics and small wind turbines to meet the power requirements onboard the righs that could not be connected to any grid.

Admitting that prohibitive costs of photovoltaic power had been an hindering factor, he said over the years there had been a 50 per cent drop in the prices and it could fall further by another 40 per cent in the coming years as huge capacities are createad.

UNI