The German Agency for International Cooperation, GIZ, will be working together with the German Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, Fraunhofer ISE, and the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) on analysing and optimising existing solar process heat installations in India as part of the Solar Process Heat (SoPro) – India project.
The project was officially launched during a kick-off meeting and expert panel discussion, which took place in New Delhi on 29 January 2014 and was jointly organised by the MNRE and the GIZ, and it will last for 2 years.
According to GIZ India’s industry has shown great interest in solar technology in order to avoid increasing fuel costs. But the nation faces several challenges to larger deployment: lack of awareness, concerns about the technology’s reliability and a lack of corroborative data on performance and cost savings.
To encourage further investments in the sector, it is essential to identify important successful installations and present them as case studies to the broader public.
Kapoor was pleased with the SoPro initiative and pointed out that “the government has recently approved an MNRE subsidy disbursement of INR 1.08 billion (around EUR 13 million) to promote solar thermal systems with a cumulative collector area of 400,000 m2 for industrial and institutional applications in different states of the country.”
The SoPro initiative includes the following goals:
Monitor three solar process heat systems: The objective is to prove through scientific monitoring that solar thermal systems in the industrial sector can deliver a significant amount of solar heat and save a significant amount of fuel if they are designed and operated well enough. The results are thought to help increase trust in solar heating technology.
Develop simple, robust and low-cost monitoring systems adapted to the demands of the Indian solar heating market and based on the experiences with the three monitored systems.
Create a database of 20 case studies of solar process heat installations and publish it on the web. The web pages should have additional information displayed as checklists, which would help system owners to better operate and maintain their solar systems and support the decision-making of prospective clients by determining the economic viability of a solar process heat investment.
Andhra Pradesh Industrial and Technical Consultancy Organisation (APITCO) has been put in charge of setting up the database of case studies. The organisation has identified 22 industries with solar thermal systems, which will be ultimately reduced to 20. Three of these chosen systems will be monitored.
