India brings forward date for equalising prices of solar, conventional power

(SeeNews) – Dec 7, 2011 – India's government has brought forward by five years the date for making equal the selling prices of solar and conventional power, due to lower tariffs in the latest projects, the Economic Times of India said today.
Tarun Kapoor, joint secretary at the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, said the government had earlier planned to achieve grid parity in 2022, but due to the response from the sector decided to bring forward the date to 2017.
The latest round of bidding under the National Solar Mission saw average tariffs of INR 8.78 (USD 0.17/EUR 0.13) per unit, with the lowest bid at INR 7.49 per unit. This compares with an average tariff of between INR 5.5 and INR 6 per unit for conventional power.
The prices of solar power are set to keep falling. One of the factors is the recent decision by the Central Electricity Regulation Committee (CERC) to cut the capital costs of solar cells. Other factors include the fall in solar cell prices globally.
(INR 100 = USD 1.943/EUR 1.449)

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