India continues to harness the sun's power

In the middle of all the violent, miserable trouble spots of the world, it is a relief to occasionally note the positives. When a positive comes out of India, a country often thought to become one of the next major economic world powers, it might even be newsworthy.

India, the world's most populous nation, is structured into 28 states, one of which is Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu (literally "Land of the Tamils"), located in India's southeast tip and across the water from Sri Lanka, has a population of 72 million (more than double the population of Canada, and in-between Germany with 81 million and France with 65 million. Its capital is Chennai, the largest city. The state has announced a new policy that has the intention to become India's solar power hub.

Tamil Nadu with its major cities - with a few that are a real mouthful for Westerners. Statistics ranked the state among the top 5 in India in Human Development Index in 2006. It is also the most urbanized state in India, and has the highest number of business enterprises and stands second in total employment in India.

Tamil Nadu's Solar Energy Policy 2012, unveiled by its Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa, aims at making the southern state a regional solar energy hub. According to an article in the New York Daily News, under the vision, the state will have solar energy parks, will encourage households to adopt solar energy, make it compulsory for all new government buildings to have rooftop solar panels and ask big industries to use solar power. The scheme aims at generating 3,000 MW of solar power by 2015. Tamil Nadu has around 300 clear sunny days in a year and southern parts of the state are considered the ideal locations for development of solar power projects.

Panels on small building rooftops, but also destined for individual homes, and large parklike arrays.

Tamil Nadu's Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa, announcing the state initiative.

A side note
Jayalalithaa Jayaram (born 24 February 1948, and commonly referred to as J. Jayalalitha) is a major Southern Indian power in her own right. Again, from wikipedia, she was a popular film star in Indian cinema before her entry into politics, having appeared in many Tamil and Telugu films, as well as several produced in Hindi and Kannada. She is called Amma ('Mother') and Puratchi Thalaivi ('Revolutionary Leader') by her followers. J. Jayalalitha, to many, is controversial, and a google search on her political stances and history make for interesting reading.

But, back to the solar policy itself, "As per the policy, the state would make it compulsory for high tension power consumers like special economic zones, industries, IT parks, telecom towers, colleges and residential schools and buildings with built up area of 20,000 square meter or more to purchase six percent solar power from Jan 2014." In addition, "installation of solar water heating systems would be made mandatory for industries having hot water boiler/steam boiler using fossil fuel."

Teatree notes that solar power is not new or unnatural. Trees are solar energy collectors, and crops are quick solar energy converters...