School of Electrical Engineering organized a webinar titled “Renewable Energy: The Sun-Shine Sector to be in”, as a part of the Universities on-going HR Conclave 2020. The webinar was held on 29th August, 2020 from 11.30 AM to 1.00 PM and was attended by more than 45 students.
The speaker for the webinar was Mr. Varinder Singh, who currently works as HR manager at Fortum, which is one of the largest power companies in Europe and now has various projects in India. Mr. Singh, an alumnus of KIIT and IIM-A has previously worked for over 5 years with Tata Power.
The webinar started off with an introduction of Mr. Varinder Singh by Prof. Swagat Das. Mr. Singh then presided over the session with a brief background on Fortum and its dominance in the field of renewable energy in the Nordic and the Baltic countries. He also enlightened the audience with Fortum’s recent projects and involvements in the field of Renewable Energy in India, especially in the field of Solar PV, and how the power sector has changed over the years and what are the major milestones achieved by our Government, as India moves towards its goal of carbon neutrality.
Mr. Singh also talked about the recent technological and economical advancements in the Solar PV industry in India and described how the rate per kWh has reduced drastically over the years. He also emphasized on the importance of IT and effects of digitization on the renewable energy industry.
At the end of the webinar, a few questions were asked by the audience to Mr. Singh. One of such question asked was “What are the financial benefits of Solar PV?”, to which Mr. Singh answered by drawing a contrasting picture of how costly it was building a PV plant 10 years ago to how cheaper it has become now. He also stated that the Solar Panels being used have higher periods of warranty of around 25 years and efficiency of the entire system has increased with addition of automation and AI. Other questions included impacts of solar PV in households, tax incentives and government policies, future of solar PV in India, and some other technical questions regarding operation of a Solar PV plant.
The webinar ended with a vote of thanks proposed by Dr. Babita Panda.
