Bhoo’s interview with Narsi, EAI on “Aspiring High with Solar Thermal” Source: EAI For those of us glued to the solar radar, most of what we see and hear today are news about solar PV. As if solar thermal simply did not exist. Or matter. And if at all we hear anything on the thermal side, it is about how large scale solar CSP plants under the National Solar Mission are facing tough times. Newspapers and mainstream blogs have a purpose – to report mainstream news. But most emerging (and attractive) business opportunities are not mainstream. Which is why these should be more interesting to entrepreneurs and investors. Solar thermal is one such. Until a few years ago, the equation was simple. Solar thermal = solar water heaters: those nice and reliable tanks on our roofs which gave us water at 65 °C. A nice product, of course, but nothing any entrepreneur would go ga-ga about. Fast forward to 2010, and you suddenly start seeing interesting movements in the solar thermal scene. Let me start from the very beginning. What indeed is solar thermal? Leaving aside CSP (concentrating solar power), which is for power generation, the heat of sunlight when used for heating purposes is solar thermal. As I said before, think solar water heaters. But now, extend your thought. Solar water heaters can give up to 65 °C; all right, stretch it a bit, perhaps 70 degrees. Which is fine for household purposes and select commercial units, but what about industrial units which require water at much higher temperatures? Say, 120 degrees? Your ordinary solar water heater will not be able to help. This is where medium temperature solar thermal kicks in. Let me lay the stuff out for you. Using the Heat of the Sun Type of solar thermal Low temp solar thermal Medium temp solar thermal class I Medium temp solar thermal class 2 High temp solar thermal for power generation Example Solar water heater Enhanced solar heaters Concentrating solar thermal (CST) Concentrating solar power (CSP) Temperatures Upto 70 °C 70-120 °C Upto 250 °C Upto 450 °C You can observe the gradation from the low 70 °C we obtain from solar water heaters up to 450 °C required for generating power from the solar heat. The first two – water heaters and enhanced solar heaters – use fairly simple technologies and materials and hence can be considered fairly low on capex. The last two depend on concentrating sunlight to produce much higher temperatures, and you are suddenly getting into more sophisticated and expensive territory. The Enhanced Solar Heaters thus falls in an interesting intersection – it is fairly simple in terms of technology and operations (similar to solar water heaters), but provides significantly higher temperatures than the water heaters. And the 70-120 °C is an interesting sweet spot for a whole host of industries and commercial units. This is the sweet spot Aspiration Energy is trying to tap into. Bhoovarahan Thirumalai (popularly called Bhoo), is a well-known entrepreneur in the solar thermal field, having been an early mover in medium temperature sector with a solution providing distinct benefits. And with the memorable nickname Bhoo, he has ensured that no one can forget him either. His company, Aspiration Energy, has ploughed along and stayed course in this pioneering area, and today he is a position to show some of his first successes. His innovative PAYS model, that eliminates capex investments for end users, appears close to an inflexion point. Having known Bhoo for almost 5 years now, I felt that there is no better time than this to sit down with him and do a detailed interview. Here we go. I ask Bhoo: So, tell me a bit more on how you got into this. I have known you for a long time, but somehow never got to know some of your history. Bhoo: Well, my partner and I were running the software company Aspire Systems, a successful software venture specializing in software product architecture support. I wanted to do something that is different and ventured out, and solar appealed to me. To begin with, I explored solar PV. Our company did a fair bit of work in developing solar PV systems for mobile telecom towers to offset diesel use. Soon after this, I explored solar thermal and zeroed in on enhanced solar thermal for industrial heating and drying. Me: The sweet spot you are aiming at, the 70-120 °C bracket for industries – what are its characteristics? Somehow, I had thought that it was not a big enough opportunity. Bhoo: Well, that sweet spot is indeed a significant opportunity. A Rs. 50,000 crore business sector of which solar thermal has the potential to have a Rs. 20,000 crore piece of the pie. Now, if Rs. 20,000 crores per year is not a big opportunity, I have to start asking what is. What is not well known is that there are many pre-treatment processes and low hanging heating processes in industries that require only temperatures up to 120 °C. For instance, in the automobile industry there is a pre-treatment process before painting. This is typically a 7-tank wash, of which 5 tanks require moderate heating temperatures. Add the hundreds of automobile units across the country, and many other industries where such pre-treatment or pre-heating is required, and we are looking at a pretty sweet spot for the 70-120 degrees bracket. For a large automobile company alone, such pre-treatment fuel costs could touch upwards of Rs 40 crores a year. There are hundreds of companies for which these costs will range between Rs 2-10 crores per year. Me: Which would these target industries be, that will be glad to have a renewable solution for the 70-120 °C bracket? Bhoo: Some of the sectors that will find medium temperature solar thermal useful are: Consumer durables (including automotive), chemical industries, companies in the dairy and food industries Me: We are talking about replacing fossil fuels such as furnace oil,