Rising Sun

Acme Group is on track to get the first half of its first 10 MW solar thermal power plant in Rajasthan online at the beginning of 2010. Acme has active plans for a further 230 MW, and thinks it can really bring the cost down.

Acme says the initial plant will cost about $3.14 million per megawatt, but can reduce costs to $1.68 million per megawatt as more projects get built. That's partly because of economies of scale and lower cost for materials in India, but more because of the nation's new National Solar Mission, which establishes new feed-in tariffs and financing possibilities.

Although part of the reduction would come with economies of scale, the company founder Upadhyay attributed the rest to India’s new National Solar Mission, which lays the framework for a feed-in-tariff and low-cost funding (see India’s new climate plan aims to set 20 GW solar goal). Those measures could reduce the cost of solar thermal power in India to power to Rs 5.80 ($0.12) per kilowatt-hour by 2015,

The eSolar agreement provides Acme with an exclusive license for India to develop 1,000 MW of solar thermal projects in the next 10 years (see Solar sell-off accelerates). ESolar developed a modular, scalable solar thermal power technology that focuses thousands of mirrors on a single point to efficiently harvest the sun’s energy and reduce costs. Acme is building a 5-MW plant in Maharashtra and has signed memorandums of understanding to build a 110-MW plant in Gujarat and a 100-MW plant in Madhya Pradesh.

Acme has exclusive license for up to 1,000 MW of plants using this technology. Looks like things are beginning to look bright in power starved India?