S
olar
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roject
O
UR future cities require smart energy solu-
tion to become sustainable. One of the im-
portant features of the Smart Cities Mission
Guidelines is that it has made mandatory
for the Smart Cities to generate 20 percent of the energy
requirement from the renewable energy and 10 percent
of the total energy requirement has to come from solar
energy. This calls for greater focus on installing solar
panels and solar power plant in the cities.
Apart from the mandatory solar energy guidelines,
the government has initiation the concept of creating
Solar Cities. Solar cities aims to assist urban local bodies
in assessing their present energy consumption and fu-
ture demand and preparing master plan for energy sav-
ings and generation through RE installations and vari-
ous energy efficiency measures.
As a part of the plan, each city has to reduce their pro-
jected energy demand by 10% over 5 years. Initially 60
cities are being developed as solar cities out of which
master plans for 50 solar cities are already prepared.
Central government will provide up to Rs. 50 lakh per
city for preparation of a Master Plan, setting-up a solar
city cell, awareness generation, capacity building and
oversight of implementation. As a part of solar cities, the
government is working on solar PV rooftop systems for
electricity, solar street lighting, solar pumps for water
lifting and solar traffic signals among many uses.
Currently in cities nearly 40% of total energy is con-
sumed by buildings alone. Energy efficient green build-
ings on solar passive design will go a long way in making
our building greener. The city has planned to install
rooftop Solar panel in all schools, government buildings,
airports and also ports and railway and bus stations.
“Solar power is a critical step to make our cities sus-CITIES UNDER THE SUN
Solar City Plan is a step towards creating energy efficient cities. However with
unclear manufacturing policy, subsidy driven model and challenges in setting
solar panel, will the sun shine over Indian cities? A BW SMARTCITIES reporttainable and energy efficient. This will take significant
load from the traditional power grid and will go a long
way in making India achieve its energy requirement,”
Piyush Goel, Minister of Power said.International Solar Alliance
Another milestone in this direction is International So-
lar Alliance (ISA), which was launched at the UN Cli-
mate Change Conference in Paris at end-November last
year, by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French
President François Hollande. As a part of the alliance,