As grid parity nears, India prepares for a solar revolution by Giles Parkinson

The Indian government has set a new interim target for solar of 9GW of grid connected solar energy by 2017 – the year that the solar industry is tipping that utility-scale solar farms will reach parity with the cost of coal-fired generation.

The new target set by the Indian government this week will see a tender for 1.6GW of large-scale solar PV projects in the first half of 2013, with a further tender of 870MW of solar PV and 1,080MW of solar thermal projects that will be constructed in the following financial year.

The interim target has been set to help India along the path to its National Solar Mission target of 22GW of installed solar capacity by 2022. But most people think there will be little problem meeting that target, because by 2017, or even earlier, solar will match the cost of coal.

V Saibaba, the chairman of the Solar Energy Task Force at the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, and chairman of local solar project developer and aspiring manufacturer Lanco, says the electricity industry in India faces a revolution in coming years as solar becomes cheaper to deploy than fossil fuels.

"Solar used to be very expensive but Germany took leadership and today it is close to grid parity," Saibaba told a conference here in Doha this week. "This was unimaginable just six years back, but it is possible to deploy technologies and make them work."