India's Leaked Solar Power Plan: 200 GW By 2050

Indian newspaper, The Hindu has come across a finalized draft of a national solar power plan that aims to have 200 GW in place by 2050.

The plan outlines expanding the use of small-scale solar PV panels and commercial-scale solar plants in both rural and urban areas and with both commercial and residential customers. Solar lighting and solar water heating will be widely implemented. The plan calls for major growth in centralized solar thermal power generation that would see it becoming competitive in cost to conventional grid power by 2020.

The country only has 3 MW of solar power capacity currently installed. We thought that France’s plan to reach 300 MW of solar capacity in the next two years was ambitious, but India’s plan blows that (and pretty much every other country’s solar plans) out of the water. Plus, India’s government only intends to invest around $18-22 million of its own money in the plan, so the country will easily be seeking hundreds of billions of dollars in investments over the course of this project to make it a reality.

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