Renewable energy in India - a modelling study for 2020-2021

The energy requirement in India is steadily increasing and this requirement is being met by both commercial and renewable energy sources. Due to the non-availability of sufficient resources and a considerable amount of emission of pollutants from commercial energy, it is now being felt that renewable energy has to be utilized to a greater extent. An optimization model was developed to determine the optimum. allocation of renewable energy in various end-uses in 2020-2021, taking into account commercial energy requirement; In lighting end-use renewable energy to an extent of 1.27 x 10(15) kJ can be utilized. Scenarios were developed for various parameters and sensitivity analysis was performed on the model. It was found that for a 3% increase in social acceptance of bio resources, there was 65% decrease in solar PV utilization and to that extent bioresources were introduced. Similar analysis was performed on the model by changing the demand, potential, reliability, emission and employment factors. The analysis revealed the critical parameters for the utilization of a renewable energy source. Using the critical parameters, appropriate policies can be formulated for promoting renewable energy sources. (C) 2000 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.