India to explore PV potential of its desert regions

Share

India's central government has commissioned a new study designed to explore the renewable energy potential of the country's vast desert regions.

The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has instructed the Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd (PGCIL) to conduct an exploratory search of the country’s driest and least developed regions, focusing on the deserts of Thar, Rajasthan; Rann of Kutch salt marsh in Gujarat; the valleys of Lahul and Spiti in Himachal Pradesh, and the largely barren Ladakh region in the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

Piyush Goyal, India's minister of state for power, coal and new and renewable energy, has commissioned the study following the publication of a 2013 report titled Desert Power India – 2050 that assessed both the renewable power potential of the country’s deserts and the feasibility of building the required infrastructure in order to maximize the regions’ potential.

The report concluded that the desert areas of India could potentially possess the potential to deliver 315.7 GW of solar and wind power, if fully realized. Early estimations by PGCIL suggest that the investment levels required to fulfill such potential would exceed $72 billion.

The Thar desert in northwestern India – also known as the Great Indian Desert – covers more than 200,000 square kilometers and acts as a natural boundary between India and Pakistan. As the world’s ninth-largest subtropical desert, Thar attracts a handful of ecotourists each year, and is home to many scattered settlements. Despite this, Thar is actually the most densely populated desert in the world with 83 people per square kilometers, compared to the desert average of seven people per square kilometer.

Popular content

This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.

Share

Related content

Elsewhere on pv magazine...

Leave a Reply

Please be mindful of our community standards.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.

Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.

You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.

Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.