 It is my great privilege and pleasure to welcome you all to this very special inaugural function of the two-week IST workshop on solar photovoltaics, which is under the NME's ICT and co-sponsored by MHRE Government of India and the MNRE. We have a very tight schedule today, so I'll now request Professor Chaitan Solanki, PI, NCPRE and also one of the co-ordinators for this course to welcome you all formally. Good morning all of you. So good morning to all who present here and good morning to all who virtually present all over the country. It is my indeed pleasure to welcome you all. Honorable Minister Dr. Farooq Abdullah, Ms. Vibhapuri Das, Secretary, Higher Education and MHRE, Sri G. B. Pradhan, Secretary, MNRE, Professor, Director, IIT Bombay, Professor Fatak, Professor Kannan, Professor Fernandez, faculty members from IIT Bombay, co-ordinators at remote center, teachers and participants at remote center. On behalf of IIT Bombay, I welcome you all in this inaugural function of teacher thousand teachers program on solar photovoltaic. In order to sustain high growth rate in India, one of the key requirement is availability of the manpower, and this is even more so when it comes to the solar photovoltaic. Our Prime Minister has launched Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission with the objective to install 20,000 megawatt of solar power in India by year 2022, and in order to achieve this, there is a need for about 100,000 trained manpower at various levels in the field of solar. Political efforts have been taken to meet this goal and setting up the National Center for Photovoltaic Research and Education at IIT Bombay was one such action taken by Ministry of New and Renewable Energy in 2010, October. We really thank Minister and Secretary MNRE for supporting the center in full way. In order to achieve the target of quality manpower training under the national solar mission, within a specified time a scalable model was required, and a scalable model that is a teacher thousand teachers method could not have come from anybody else than Prasad D. B. Fatak. So, Prasad Fatak, thank you very much for starting that. So, in this teacher thousand teachers model, the lectures is given from one location and received simultaneously at many centers across the country. This particular teacher thousand teachers training program is focused on solar photovoltaics. The title of this course is Solar Photovoltaics Fundamentals, Technologies and Applications. As the name suggests, the course is designed to give a broad skill set on photovoltaic technology including the physics behind it, manufacturing of the technology, the power electronics, solar radiation, PV system design, etcetera. The planning of this training has started almost a year back in January 2011. And we have organized two workshops to come to this level. One workshop was in April on a theory part of this course and one workshop on the, in the September on the experimental side of this course. The lectures of about 40 hours covering the range of topics will be delivered from IT Bombay and will be received at remote centers using an interactive two-way web based software called Aview. Besides theory, it is important to get the hands on experience by conducting the experiments and in order to enable this, IT Bombay has designed a prototype laboratory kit which is useful for characterization of cells, modules and various other PV system. So, together with this kit, we have also provided a PV lab training manual, a CD containing videos on how to conduct this experiments. We have also provided a book on photovoltaics. So, overall it is a very solid package on solar photovoltaic training for teachers and with this effort, we hope that we will be able to deliver quality education and training on photovoltaics. So, there are about 35 remote center with registered participant about 30 to 50 at each center. In total 1500 teachers have registered, but after doing the due diligence, we have allowed 1230 teachers to attend this workshop. These teachers will represent more than 200 colleges across the country and in order to keep this 200 colleges engaged in solar PV activity, after this course, we have proposed a laboratory kit to all interested colleges for which a ministry has already given in principle approval and we thank MNRI for the same once again. At the end, organizing a training program of this scale is only possible by the contribution of many, many people in the institute. So, first of all, I would like to thank Professor Fatak and Professor Kanan for initiating and continuing this 1000 teachers training program. Professor Arora has played a very key role in developing and designing the laboratory kit. The great amount of work has been done by Dr. Mukta and her team. Our project staff Seema Gaurav has been constantly working on this organization of this event. And most importantly, Professor Vashi has initiated this for NCPRE and started this link and his passionate and inspirational guidance is always with us to take the event to a very high level. So, in all, I want to thank all of you who has supported and helped to organize this conference and brought us to this level. All the coordinators who have done excellent job at each remote center in the last couple of days, I have called almost everybody and I was, I got a pleasant surprise that everybody was enthusiastically busy in organizing this event. So, many thanks to all the coordinators at the remote center. I hope all the participants will have the fruitful learning time during the next 10 days. Thank you all. I now request Professor D.B. Fatak to say a few words about the teacher 1000 teachers and in the process we'll also be visiting a remote center. Ms. Pradhan, Prosa Kakkar, Chaitan, colleagues present here and colleagues attending from remote centers. I also have a job to revisit the time schedule and bring it back on time. So I'll spend very little time, Chaitan has already mentioned about this program. We started it about four years ago under the ages of national mission for education using ICT. This program is spearheaded by Mr. Sinha in MHRD. The erstwhile secretary Mr. Agarwal and Mr. Sinha had a presentation from us. Subsequently, Ms. Vibhapuridas has been spearheading this effort. We are very proud to have conducted already more than seven workshops. This is the earth one in the series and we propose to continue engaging thousands of teachers using a blended mode of personal interaction with usage of remote facilities for two-way interaction on audio and video. I only remember what honorable minister for higher education for MHRD Mr. Kapil Sibbal said once while interacting with 1000 teachers that why should we limit this only to training teachers in engineering colleges. This can definitely be used to train teachers in schools and colleges. We are working on that and we would hopefully be expanding this model in the next plan to a much larger number of teachers across schools and colleges to cover. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the minister for HRD, the secretaries and the others for for permitting us to take up this very important initiative and to take it to the fruition. With this I would like to go over to one of the remote centers to have a very brief interaction with the participant. Amal Jyoti College of Engineering, you are seeing a participating center Amal Jyoti College of Engineering in Kerala. May I request someone from there to make a brief comment please for a minute. If the coordinator is there, over to you. Yes sir, we have made all the arrangements clear and the participants almost are in. Few more are yet to arrive. Okay, thank you so much. I would now like to request our director, Prasadevan Khakkar to give his welcome address. Mr. Farooq Abdullah, Honorable Minister for New and Renewable Energy. Ms. Vivaapuri Das, Secretary of Higher Education. Mr. Jeevi Pradhan, Secretary MNRE, Professor Fatah, Professor Solanki, Professor Vasi in the audience and distinguished colleagues, all participants in this program. Ladies and gentlemen, it's really a pleasure for me to welcome you to the inauguration of this workshop on solar photovoltaics. I see this workshop at the confluence of two great national missions of this country. One is the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission and the second, the National Mission on Education using information and communication technology. The workshop will provide an intensive exposure to about 1200 teachers using the tools of modern communication and the infrastructure that has been set up through the National Mission on Education using ICT. The logistics of actually getting 1200 participants to IIT Bombay would have been prohibitive and also with so many teachers coming out of their colleges to this institute would have really disrupted their own schedules significantly. So, really using ICT has made the interaction easy and also cost effective. I don't think we could have conducted such a course for so many participants so easily as we can do using the tools of ICT and really I must compliment the team at IIT Bombay led by Professor D. B. Fatak to actually develop all the intricacies of doing this kind of intensive course which involves 40 hours of lectures, experiments and so forth to be able to run these remotely I think is a feat and really the team deserves congratulations. A second point that is very important is that here the focus is on teachers. I think this is a very important focus since the information is being transmitted to teachers who will in turn transmit this to the students generation after generation. So, in a sense by teaching a thousand teachers we are effectively teaching farm or students. I am sure that this particular program which is related to solar photovoltaics will in fact contribute significantly to the training of the required manpower in solar photovoltaics. I would like to mention that IIT Bombay is committed strongly to research and education in both the national missions and of course this is also a very good place to acknowledge the very generous support that we have received from MNRE and MHRD for these programs. The support has enabled setting up of the required research facilities and has coalesced large groups of faculty to work collaboratively in research which is related to the national missions. I think having these facilities has really brought together a large number of faculties and in fact because of this there is a synergistic effect as compared to faculty working individually. Besides the research we also have a strong training component and really the one that I am most excited about is the training at the PhD level. We have a large cohort of PhD students who are working on problems related to solar energy in different departments and we have a new program, a new PhD program on educational technology which is contributing to research in how we can use ICT in education. Students graduating from these programs will themselves become teachers, will become researchers in areas which are of great importance to the nation currently. Finally, I would like to wish all the participants a very enlightening and exciting time in the weeks ahead. I am sure all of you will learn many new things and also make many new friends. I am happy that you have made this first connection with IIT Bombay and I hope that you will all continue the contacts that you make through this workshop. I would like to end by saying that it is really a privilege. I feel that it is a privilege for me to be here and I welcome all of you again. I am sure that this program will have a significant impact on the nation's progress in this important area of solar photovoltaics. Thank you. Thank you very much sir. We will now move over to Delhi from where Ms. Vibhapuri Das, Secretary Higher Education MHRD will address the gathering. Good morning. I am really delighted. Prof. Khakar, Prof. Patak, Dr. Parukap Dulla, Dr. Pradhan, I am really delighted to be with you this morning and all of the remote centres listening to this program from different parts of the country. It is really exciting to be part of this journey and to join in this inaugural function. First of all, my heartiest congratulations to Prof. Patak, Prof. Khakar and the entire team and Prof. Kanan is sitting here with us. It is a real excellent beginning to what we need in this country of collaboration. Collaboration is the game of the game both within the NMEI city and as Prof. Khakar just said amongst the two national missions and apart from energy which we need in abundant measure, I think from the point of view of education we need a large number of do-ables, expanding GER, expanding the number of teachers, increasing and enhancing the quality of teachers, enhancing problem solving abilities in the remote areas. For all of this, the national mission and education through ICT is making these significant and revolutionary efforts to reach different parts of the country at the same time. I think this 1000 teacher training program which is funded through this mission will be one of the flagship schemes which will deliver scalability as well as quality to distant locations. I would like at this stage to brief you a little bit about what the NMEI city has already achieved. The most significant achievement as you are aware is that all 1200 odd teachers from different parts are here watching a program and participating in it together. The national program for technology enabled learning which was started as part of the NMEI city has already developed content in 240 core subjects. It is a phenomenal repository of excellent course material which is offered now across the country and in fact across the world. We are very proud of the fact that the IIT system has helped develop BTECH programs of five engineering disciplines and using these courses it is possible to run the entire BE degree program in civil, electrical, electronics and mechanical engineering. And now efforts are on to develop another 900 courses. Similarly in the other segment we have requested the consortium of education communication and inter university center of the UGC to develop 100 courses in topics in the subject of history, communications, liberal arts, etc. UGC itself is coordinating creation of science courses at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. These courses are now being developed with the help of college professors. My request to all the teachers participating in this program that you should not only be participants in receiving the program but also in creating it and delivering it. Since these programs are being conceived off on a free of charge mode, I expect that this should become a part of a very major revolution in the country in making available quality learning materials to different parts. The thousand teacher training program is an important component of the talk to teacher project. It charges excellent professors with the responsibility of sharing education material and also instructional methodologies with about thousand teachers and I am happy that it is not just thousand, it is even much more than thousand. It allows all participants to share their content, their problem sets, their question papers and projects with everyone else. The resulting repository is expected to be an exhaustive source of information for all learners. This program has already yielded rich dividends. It has confirmed that technology can be used to reach out to people who are normally left out and we are very happy that many more women and many more teachers from rural and remote areas have been able to join this program than would have been possible as Professor Khakhar said if the program was being run in IIT Bombay itself. I am very happy that this program has already been developed and has been conducted in the subjects of C programming, databases, thermodynamics, basic electronics and open source software. I am delighted to know that Professor Patak will be organizing a 10,000 teacher training program on research methodologies to be taught by professors of IIT Madras and IIT Bombay. I would like Professor Patak and his team to also share this know-how with others who would like to launch similar programs. I think this effort at collaboration must be expanded in concentric circles to reach larger and larger volumes as well as larger and larger paradigms. In other areas also like science, commerce, linguistics, arts, there is scope for using this technology. Also IIT professors have been the major creators of the content so far. As I said in the UGC system we are testing other institutions and professors and teachers from other institutions. I certainly think that it is time now that we should explore even in the areas of science and technology teachers and learners from other institutions to also collaborate in the making of the program. The program Ask a Question which is also a part of the talk to a teacher project has now completed 40 sessions. This is truly exciting and I hope as part of this program the teachers who are participating will be able to give their feedback on how useful and how productive they found this program because the 40 sessions having been conducted and the questions of students in diverse disciplines already having been answered I am sure there is already a large body of experience as well as excitement. The other team that has already been part of this exciting endeavor is the team of A-View Software through the agency of which we are talking to each other today and we are having the benefit of moving through this web-enabled technology. The software development and deployment has been assisted and funded by the National Mission and I would expect that all colleges and universities participating today will be able to use this technology themselves. I know that with the one GBPS bandwidth now available to all universities and progressively to all colleges the potential for deploying technology has expanded exponentially. I will also like to talk to you about the new low-cost computing device which has recently been launched called AKAS which is here which is what I am holding before you and this is my colleague Shri Anke Sinha and colleagues from other collaborating departments have helped in creating this and he has already written to vice-chancellors and heads of academic institutions to get feedback on the number of units that they desire and I will request you to also in turn request the head of your institution to respond to this invitation. Through AKAS we will be making a large number of open-source software systems such as SyLab and Python available to you. This will be useful for students and for teachers. We are using spoken tutorials to popularize the software system through self-learning workshops numbering more than 100 every month. Through AKAS all educational material developed through NMEI CT will become even more accessible and glad that training provided through technologies and education methodologies conceived in the MHRD are helping produce professionals in niche areas such as new and renewable energy. We look forward to much more collaboration in future and I wish this program and the programs at IIT Bombay tremendous success. Thank you so much for being with me and allowing me to be part of this program. Thank you very much madam for those encouraging words. With this there is a slight change in the schedule since the honorable minister is required to reach Pardia in time. Mr Pradhan has kindly agreed to speak at the end of the session. I will now take you over to Delhi for the inaugural address by Dr. Farooq Abdullah honorable minister of new and renewable energy. Let me see if I can go over to Delhi. Good morning honorable minister. All the people here and in Delhi and about 1200 teachers await your inaugural talk sir. Over to you. Thank you. Mr. Pradhan, Secretary MNRE, Madam Puri, Professor Kakkar, Professor Patak, ladies and gentlemen. Good morning to all of you. I am happy to know that IIT Bombay has organized a training program for the teachers and I congratulate the IIT team for doing so. Jawaharlal mission, solar mission was basically conceived in I think in 2006. But over the years there were certain changes that were brought about in this and finally it came two years ago and we started working on Jawaharlal solar mission. This mission is basically to produce 20,000 megawatts of solar power by 2022 and the first phase which will be completed by 2013 will have 1300 megawatts of power out of which 1100 will be grid connected and the other villages and things like this. By the second phase will be up to 2017 which would be another 4000 megawatts and the final phase will be completed by 2022 which means we will have 20,000 megawatts of power. This is under Jawaharlal Nero mission. Now one of the most important things is that we need people and what you have done today is to really stimulate this for our teachers who will be the very fundamental base of the future of developing this energy and I think I congratulate all of you who have put this in place. Now several policy initiatives have been announced by the ministry which include provincial tariff for solar power through regulators, innovative policy of bounding of solar power with conventional thermal power to reduce the burden of distribution companies, bidding for tariff, discounting to select projects and impose bids, bounds to avoid adventurous bids, amendment to national tariff policy to introduce solar specific renewable purchase obligation, solar specific renewable energy certificates, concessions in customs and excise duty for grid solar power projects, refinancing to NABAD and other banks to provide loans to consumers at 5% annual interest rate and 30% to 90% subsidy for users depending on geographical locations and grant support for research. I must tell you all, it wasn't easy to convince the banks that this is workable and I must also give you the good news. We started with this at 18 rupees per unit then it came down to nearly 11 rupees when the last bidding was done and the final bidding we did for the first phase some weeks ago it came down to 8 rupees and one bidder gave us 7 rupees 50 paisa and we are very happy and I am glad to tell you and my secretary will brief you on this later that we hope to bring it down to 5.5 rupees soon because what is important is that we want more factories to come up so that more production is done of this and more utilization can be done because I can tell you 40% of our country still does not have energy and many of our villages do not even know what a lamp looks like and here is an energy that God has given us free and we need to utilize this sun energy for the betterment of the people and in this we all can work together and I am happy to know that all of you have joined in and I am grateful to Madam Puri also that the higher education ministry of government of India is also doing a major role in developing our skilled people because that is what we need most because many of these things will come but unless you have skilled people to operate them in most difficult areas it will be very difficult to say that we have achieved success ministry has also initiated a process of selection and our 350 megawatts batch 2 during 2011-12 by now about 147 megawatts capacity grid solar power projects have been commissioned in the country under various schemes it is expected that by March 2012 about 400 megawatts capacity projects will be commissioned in the country in the area of upgrade solar by now more than 67 megawatts capacity projects have been sanctioned which is expected to give 100 megawatts by March 2013 about 5 million square meter solar thermal collectors area is also initiated by now in order to obtain quality radiation data for solar thermal projects 51 new radiation data monitoring centers have been set up by the ministry besides the centers already operated by I am I am D to encourage quality research and solar energy my ministry has set up 5 centers of excellence the national center for previous research and education at Bombay IIT even of our major centers we have also announced another center in solar thermal at IIT Jodhpur Rajasthan a total of 36 research projects are under implementation this includes several projects involving industry and industry academia partnership for the success of all our programs we need trained and that is where you all come in we need trained qualified manpower we have announced fellowships we have also decided to have chair at the premier institutions my ministry will give you all the help that you need but we need you and particularly the teachers that are listening to me to work hard if you want to make India strong what we need is power and unless we give power to our villages we will never build a happy India and that is where we all work together let us hope that this what you have started today really grows into a big movement which will help us in achieving our object God bless you all God bless our nation Jai Hind Thank you very much sir and now I request Sri G.V. Pradhan secretary ministry for new and renewable energy to please address the category Honourable minister for new and renewable energy Dr. Farukh Abdullah my colleague and friend Ms. Vibhapuri Das director of IIT Mumbai and Dr. Kharkar Dr. Patak the entire team they are all professors here so collectively all professors and doctors who are on the team thank you very much I will try and manage my time because I think we have overshot the allotted time that was given friends you have heard director IIT Mumbai you have heard the secretary HRD and the Honourable Minister for new and renewable energy let me just make a few points first the ministry of new and renewable energy is partnering with IIT Mumbai on this very important research and development and education program on solar photovoltaic and we consider it a privilege Dr. Kharkar that the ministry is in partnership with you within a very short while I think the program was kicked off in 2010 and by 2011 you are delivering a training program which is addressing more than 1200 teachers from colleges all over India which I think is a fantastic thing the second point that I'd like to emphasize is the synergy between the two missions the one that secretary HRD was referring to and the Jawaharlal Nehru Sona mission that the MNRE is doing the synergy that's coming up because of this is I think another thing which is indeed unique and should take both programs forward in substantial manner the third message I'd like to give you an obviously the fact that you are there in such large numbers and have registered for this program shows how you view solar photovoltaic as far as we are concerned we think that solar photovoltaic is going to revolutionize energy access for a large part of our population it has tremendous scope it has tremendous diversity and the amount of play that can take place with innovation and imagination is terrific and therefore we consider this to be a very important element of our mission on solar energy in fact the minister had mentioned the rapid decline that has met our various attempts at auctioning megawatt capacity on solar and let me tell you that it was just a matter of two years and the grid connected tariffs have come down to less than half so this is tremendous news for the future this is tremendous hope and we'd like not only the teachers but the students whom they are going to teach because I understand that 1200 of you would then at least teach 20 to 30 students and within a short while we'd have this young group working on solar and that's what's really exciting about this program I'd like to once again not take too much time I'd like to once again thank the IIT Mumbai this visit of mine to the modern temple and I'm sure that all of you look upon IIT Mumbai as that has been a tremendous eye-opener and the partnership I'm sure on the research and development side also will progress in a similar fast pace the important thing is that we don't have much time we are relatively late comers to this scene as of 2009 we had only two megawatts of grid connected solar power today we have 147 megawatts and we intend to take that to almost 1100 by March 2013 and then 20,000 by 2022 so we time is of the essence so that's something that I would again like to flag for the consideration of the team in IIT Mumbai thank you very much I give you all my best wishes and trust that you will gain a lot from this program thank you very much thank you very much sir now I'd like to invite Professor Fernandez who is co-PI for NCPRE and also one of the course coordinators for this workshop on solar photovoltaics to come up and propose the vote of thanks good morning to all of you in fact Chetan has already done my job nevertheless I'll do it again on behalf of IIT Bombay I would like to thank Dr. Farouk Abdullah, Honorable Minister for Renewable Energy for inaugurating this teacher 1000 teachers course I'm confident that his address to 130 teachers in 35 centers across the country will motivate them to start new initiatives in solar energy at their colleges so that it reaches the common man I also thank Shri Pradhan, Secretary Mnari, Srimati, Viva Pridhas, Secretary, Higher Education, M.H.R.D. for participating in this unique inter ministry collaboration thanks also to Professor Kakkar and Professor Pardak for speaking to the teachers and sharing their insight I thank the coordinators of the remote center for their efforts finally special thanks to teacher 1000 teachers team and NCPRE team for who have worked long hours to make this course a reality thank you one and all I'm sorry for butting in but there are three very important people who need to be thanked additionally you don't see them here I will first name the three people in the order of merit Professor Zuzer Wasi who conceptualized the whole synergy between the two of us may I request Professor Zuzer could you please raise your hand let me tell you it was not easy when we brainstormed because our original mandate was to address core courses in engineering whereas by no stretch of imagination a photovoltaic cell is currently a core course my brain wave suggested that we could define it as a future core course it was universally agreed between my own faculty colleagues and thanks to M.H.R.D. for agreeing that but without Zuzer's initiative and his constant perseverance of everything this would not have happened my personal thanks Zuzer the second person is in absentia his name is Dr. Kamal Bijlani he works for Amruta University and the AVU software that we are using so effectively has been a brainchild of Kamal and has been the result of dedicated efforts about 150 people working quietly in the Amruta precincts of course supported by my friend Professor Venkat Rangan the Vice Chancellor the third is a large number of my own colleagues in this institute who made this kind of thing possible and the support that we get the unstinted support that we get is led by our director Professor Devan Kakkar so I would like to personally thank him I would also like to additionally mention a large number of my faculty colleagues from non-computer science departments particularly from mechanical engineering departments these are the people who realizing perhaps the importance and possibility of reaching out to thousands of teachers were the first ones and the maximum number of courses are being conducted under this program of course there are people from other departments but from the mechanical engineering department so my personal thanks to them and also to the offices of various deans and others without whose active support this would not have been possible needless to add the department of computer science entirely stands behind us led by Professor Amitabh Sanyal is not here I am thankful to all of them thank you so much