India needs more and more energy for its all-round progress. But unfortunately, we are facing an energy crisis
While we need to augment our energy resources, we must save it Write an article in 100-120 words on the topic
'Conservation of Energy'.
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Answer:
Now an impression has been created that solar power could be the panacea for solving all issues related to climate change and energy independence for India. This is far from the truth. Since despite the aggressive international marketing even for India during the next 4-5 decades 'coal will still be the king'! Today about 60 per cent of India's power is generated using hydrocarbons.
There is no doubt that India loves the sun god and the country as a whole is bestowed with more than 300 sunny days which makes it a very attractive option to generate electricity. However, there is still a huge catch: the sun is available only for half a day and hence excessive over reliance on solar power can be very hazardous during darkness.
Today the country plans to ramp up its solar power generating capacity to 100,000 MW by 2022, an almost 25-fold increase from 4000 MW of installed capacity in 2015. This means every year India will have to install about 14,000 MW of solar power continuously for the next 7 years if this ambitious 100 gigawatt target has to be achieved. What is the past record of accomplishment, in the last 5 years India put up only about 2000 MW of installed solar power.
Several bottlenecks still need to be overcome in harnessing solar power for generating electricity. Today even the best of the best commercially available solar photo voltaic cells give and efficiency less than 20 per cent which is a relatively poor conversion ratio and it is for this reason that solar cells have to have large surface areas. This when translated means very large tracts of land area would get covered with solar panels if the equivalent of 100,000 MW has to be generated.
The other and bigger bottleneck is the need for storage of generated power. Since solar panels are no good when there is no sunlight like say at night or during the heavy clouds that cover the sky during the monsoons, in the