It is not often that we hear of India getting ahead of China, but here is one such rare instance. In terms of installation of equipment for solar heat for industrial process, India ranked a step above China, to claim the second position, after Oman.

Solar heat for Industrial Processes (SHIP) are systems like rooftop solar — only these are ‘collectors’ that pick up sun’s heat typically to heat water (in tubes placed on a reflecting surface) or air (trapped between flat plates). The fluids are then supplied to industries for their processes.

To give an example, Hatsun Agro, one of the larger dairy products manufacturers in the country, gets solar-derived heat energy supplied to it by third parties, which it uses for drying the insides of stainless steel tanks.

A recent report of the International Energy Agency (IEA) said that India was the second highest (after an outlier Oman), but in terms of average collector size, India’s 425 sq mts was higher than only Mexico’s 178 sq mts. In other countries, the individual plant sizes are large, implying lower costs of installation and therefore lower costs of energy.

With the 2017 installations, India has 307 systems with a total collector area of 94,600 sq mts.

This data point, it must be stressed, relates only to SHIP. As can be seen from the table, India accounted for 8 per cent of global installations in terms of square metres in 2017, a year that saw record SHIP installations globally. However, if you look at all other installations of solar heat, such as residential water heating and district heating, the numbers change, but the IEA report said that India grew the fastest – 26 per cent – in terms of overall solar heat.

The potential for the use of solar heat in industries is practically unlimited. Solar heat has a play wherever the temperature required is not too high — say, up to 400 degrees Celsius. The United Nations Industrial Development Organisation estimates that India’s potential for solar heat for industries is 6.52 GWth, compared with the existing capacity of around 52 MWth.