Punjab’s innovative and result-oriented solar mission on Sunday won nation’s recognition with Prime Minister Narendra Modi awarding “best performing State award” in renewable energy capacity building to the State.
The award was received by the State New and Renewable Energy Minister Bikram Singh Majithia during the inaugural session of the first Renewable Energy Global Investors’ Meet and Expo-2015 held at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi.
Congratulating Punjab on its outstanding performance in promoting renewable energy in a big way, the Modi emphasised the need to use solar power to better the life of the ordinary man.
He stressed on manufacturing equipment needed to create solar power in India to generate jobs besides the need to go in for technology upgradation in league with nations who possessed expertise in this field.
Modi also gave a call to develop solar and wind energy side-by-side wherever possible to give a boost to the renewable energy sector in the country. later, in the afternoon during interactions with investors, Majithia said Punjab had achieved so much in the renewable sector in a short period due to political will coupled with innovative hand holding.
He exhorted entrepreneurs to invest in Punjab as the State was committed to extend every possible support to them to set up their projects. “Punjab has formulated a policy to allot projects within 60 days by using the single window project clearance system. As Minister in-charge, I myself monitored day-to-day developments besides involving district administration to address local issues on the spot,” he said.
Highlighting the advantages for renewable power projects in Punjab, Majithia revealed that the State possessed country’s best power transmission and distribution system with 66 KVA sub-stations at every 10 kilometres.
He said that Punjab was offering power purchase agreement for 25 years with the State power utility, which made solar projects a viable investment.
“Punjab has floated India’s largest tender of 100 MW grid connected roof top solar power projects after identifying required roof tops throughout the state. We have world’s single largest roof top solar power project of 7.5 MW in Beas (Amritsar) and 28 MW more are being added there itself,” he said.
Similarly, he said, the State had notified its net metering policy and was committed to set up 200 MW power projects on one lakh houses in next three years with the motive of encouraging people to produce their own power.
Urging investors to set up biomass power projects, Majithia pointed out that the state had huge potential of 21 million tonne of agriculture residue availability. Punjab, at present, had seven biomass power projects with joint capacity of 62.5 MW but huge potential remained untapped,” he said.
He said that Punjab had signed an MoU to set up first ever bio-ethanol refinery followed by five more such paddy straw based production units having joint investment of one billion dollars. “World’s largest cow-dung based Bio-CNG plant of 10,000 cubic meters would also be commissioned next month,” he said.