India and EU step up cooperation on solar energy

New Delhi, June 29: Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) joined hands with European Union Delegation in India and launched the Standard Operation Procedures (SOP) and monitoring tool (www.mnre-solarparksindia.com) for Indian solar parks.

 

Solar parks are key for India to achieve its target of 100 GW by 2022, contributing to this target with 40 GW. 100 GW will avoid 0,15 gigaton of CO2 in the atmosphere yearly. India and The EU are collaborating closely in the deployment of climate-friendly energy sources including solar energy. Developed as part of the EU India cooperation in Clean Energy and Climate Partnership Project, they were launched by Praveen Kumar, Additional Secretary of MNRE and Friederike Tschampa, Chargé d'Affaires a.i., Delegation of the European Union to India.

www.mnre-solarparksindia.com, an online monitoring tool designed and implemented under the European Union technical program, will have general information on solar parks and as well as dynamic data on energy, power, voltage, and frequency from commissioned solar parks. This tool will provide data to all interested parties in India and abroad allowing also MNRE to better track the solar parks development and operation through the years to come.

During 2016 – 2019, solar power grew in India from around 4 GW to more than 29 GW (up to May 2019), putting India on the world top 5 solar markets. Solar parks went from 1 park with a total of 345 MW to 12 parks of up to around 6500 MW with more than an additional 10 other solar parks under different stages of development.

Identifying solar parks as one of the key areas under EU India cooperation in clean energy and climate action, the project has supported over 16 Indian States (agencies) including Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Kerala, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Meghalaya, Assam, Arunachal, Nagaland, and has interacted with the states of Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Manipur and Mizoram in several areas linked with solar parks and solar power development and implementation.

In order to further strengthen the cooperation between both nations under the Clean Energy and Climate Partnership project, new joint activities can be developed in the area of solar energy.