Identification and analysis of income streams for renewable energy businesses

Abstract

Energy security issues and climate change focus have led the campaign in favour of the usage of renewable energy sources for power generation. However, with so many renewable sources being available for a choice, any entrepreneur or business house would need to analyse all of them before coming to a conclusion on the business to invest in. This project work was undertaken as such an effort to form the basis for future entrepreneurial efforts. The renewable energy sources considered for the analysis were: - Solar PV, - Biomass Gasification, - Biogas, - Wind, and - Geothermal energy. These were considered only for their power generation applications (as that would be the focus of the entrepreneurial efforts in the future). The above mentioned technologies were studied to identify various parameters, viz. - Capital cost, - O&M costs, - Levelized cost of energy, - Various possible income streams, - Potential in India, At the end of the analysis, it was found that Solar PV technology is suited for entrepreneurs/business houses with tremendous amount of time and resources at hand. Wind and Geothermal technologies could be capitalized by mid-sized firms / entrepreneurs with average to above average resources in possession. Biogas and Biomass gasification are technologies that can be pursued by entry level entrepreneurs/small business firms. Having arrived at this conclusion, it also needs to be seen whether renewable energy sources should really be invested in by Indian players, given the immaturity of the field, be it any of the above technologies. The reason for this doubt is the availability of tremendous reserves of coal in the country, expect to last at least this full century.