My solar system

Solar power is the conversion of energy from sunlight into electricity, either directly using photovoltaics (PV), indirectly using concentrated solar power, or a combination. Concentrated solar power systems use lenses or mirrors and tracking systems to focus a large area of sunlight into a small beam. Photovoltaic cells convert light into an electric current using the photovoltaic effect.


Photovoltaics were initially solely used as a source of electricity for small and medium-sized applications, from the calculator powered by a single solar cell to remote homes powered by an off-grid rooftop PV system. Commercial concentrated solar power plants were first developed in the 1980s. The 392 MW Ivanpah installation is the largest concentrating solar power plant in the world, located in the Mojave Desert of California.


As the cost of solar electricity has fallen, the number of grid-connected solar PV systems has grown into the millions and utility-scale solar power stations with hundreds of megawatts are being built. Solar PV is rapidly becoming an inexpensive, low-carbon technology to harness renewable energy from the Sun. The current largest photovoltaic power station in the world is the 850 MW Longyangxia Dam Solar Park, in Qinghai, China.


The International Energy Agency projected in 2014 that under its "high renewables" scenario, by 2050, solar photovoltaics and concentrated solar power would contribute about 16 and 11 percent, respectively, of the worldwide electricity consumption, and solar would be the world's largest source of electricity. Most solar installations would be in China and India. Currently, as of 2016, solar power provides just 1% of total worldwide electricity production but growing 33% per annum.


Solar power in India is a fast developing industry. As of September, 2017 the country's solar grid had a cumulative capacity of 16.20 GW. India quadrupled its solar-generation capacity from 2,650 MW on 26 May 2014 to 12,289 MW on 31 March 2017. The country added 3.01 GW of solar capacity in 2015-2016 and 5.525 GW in 2016-2017, the highest of any year, with the average current price of solar electricity dropping to 18% below the average price of its coal-fired counterpart.


In January 2015 the Indian government expanded its solar plans, targeting US$100 billion in investment and 100 GW of solar capacity (including 40 GW from rooftop solar) by 2022. India's initiative of 100 GW of solar energy by 2022 is an ambitious target, since the world's installed solar-power capacity in 2014 was 181 GW. The improvements in solar thermal storage power technology in recent years has made this task achievable as the cheaper solar power need not depend on costly and polluting coal/gas/nuclear fired power generation for ensuring stable grid operation.


In addition to its large-scale grid-connected solar PV initiative, India is developing off-grid solar power for local energy needs. The country has a poor rural electrification rate; in 2015 only 55 percent of all rural households had access to electricity, and 85 percent of rural households depended on solid fuel for cooking. Solar products have increasingly helped to meet rural needs; by the end of 2015 just under one million solar lanterns were sold in the country, reducing the need for kerosene. That year, 118,700 solar home lighting systems were installed and 46,655 solar street lighting installations were provided under a national program; just over 1.4 million solar cookers were distributed in India.


In January 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President François Hollande laid the foundation stone for the headquarters of the International Solar Alliance (ISA) in Gwal Pahari, Gurugram. The ISA will focus on promoting and developing solar energy and solar products for countries lying wholly or partially between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. The alliance of over 120 countries was announced at the Paris COP21 climate summit. One hope of the ISA is that wider deployment will reduce production and development costs, facilitating the increased deployment of solar technologies to poor and remote regions

With about 300 clear and sunny days in a year, the calculated solar energy incidence on India's land area is about 5000 trillion kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year (or 5 EWh/yr). The solar energy available in a year exceeds the possible energy output of all fossil fuel energy reserves in India. The daily average solar-power-plant generation capacity in India is 0.20 kWh per m² of used land area, equivalent to 1400–1800 peak (rated) capacity operating hours in a year with available, commercially-proven technology

Solar-panel manufacturing

The 2016 manufacturing capacity of solar cells and solar modules in India was 1,212 MW and 5,620 MW, respectively. Except for crystalline silicon wafers or cadmium telluride photovoltaics, nearly 80 percent of solar-panel weight is flat glass. One hundred to 150 tons of flat glass is used to manufacture a one-MW solar panel. Low-iron flat or float glass is manufactured from soda ash and iron-free silica. Soda-ash manufacturing from common salt is an energy-intensive process if it is not extracted from soda lakes or glasswort cultivation in alkali soil. To increase installation of photovoltaic solar-power plants, the production of flat glass and its raw materials must expand to eliminate supply constraints or future imports

Forecasts

In 2010, the International Energy Agency predicted that global solar PV capacity could reach 3,000 GW or 11% of projected global electricity generation by 2050—enough to generate 4,500 TWh of electricity. Four years later, in 2014, the agency projected that, under its "high renewables" scenario, solar power could supply 27% of global electricity generation by 2050 (16% from PV and 11% from CSP). In 2015, analysts predicted that one million homes in the U.S. will have solar power by the end of 2016