Decentralized solar applications: a decadal perspective

Abstract

This project work is the result of work done by the author during the internship period with M/s KPMG Hyderabad. KPMG is one of the largest professional services networks in the world and one of the Big Four auditors, along with Deloitte, Ernst & Young (EY) and PwC. Its global headquarters is located in Amstelveen, Netherlands. KPMG employs 145,000 people and has three lines of services: audit, tax, and advisory. Its advisory services are further divided into three service groups - Management Consulting, Risk Consulting, and Transaction & Restructuring. The author has interned in the area of management consulting.KPMG releases benchmarking reports on several sectors where it has presence in the area of consulting. Renewable Energy Sector is one such area of expertise of KPMG. Solar Energy is one of the recent additions to the company’s portfolio, the area where the company aims to carve an edge for itself. The Rising Sun (May 2011) is the first in the series of industry reports that company came out with. The current project forms the part of the second report that company aims to come out in the year 2012. During the assignment period, the author is exposed to various aspects of solar industry, its technologies, primary and secondary research across the globe. In this report, decentralized applications of solar energy market have been studied with specific focus on cost economics. Last two years have seen a considerable drop in the cost and prices of various solar components, making solar energy a potential replacement to the currently expensive energy sources. With India aiming at 22 GW of solar generated grid power by the end of the year 2022 through the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM), the local solar market has gained momentum and is all set to make solar energy more viable and cheaper to the end user. Only Solar Photo Voltaic (PV) technology is considered for the study of the project. The key concept of the project is to gain understanding of the cost of decentralized solar photovoltaic system today. The past trends in the last five years system components and cross country trends in the costs are estimated to understand the behavior of solar cost. The cost drivers for the solar PV system are arrived at. Based on the projections of the cost drivers, the solar pv system costs have been projected to arrive at a decadal perspective. The stability of grid with increased penetration of solar installations have been studied with specific focus on Germany’s solar market where 17 GW of solar installations have been added in the year 2011 alone. Load curve analysis and Payback analysis have been done to probe new insights.