Bathed in the artificial yellow light of a New Delhi restaurant, the dainty dumplings lay unattended. Not a ray of sunshine was peering through the cracks but my mind was getting fuzzy with the zeros of the sunlight. At any given moment, the sun emits 174,000,000,000,000,000, or 174 quadrillion watts. Phew!

The solar energy hitting the earth exceeds the total energy consumed by humanity by a factor of over 20,000 times. If one were to harness solar energy, the purest form of renewable energy, it would mean zero greenhouse emissions and lower electricity bills. All one needs to do is mount sleek, siliconlaced solar panels on the rooftop at a 260 tilt due south. And let the sun be an eternal power supplier. The fat electricity bills will thin. And it will save the world some warming woes.

Feasible Reality Sounds like sci-fi stuff? No. It is a feasible reality. Bathed in artificial yellow light, I was listening intently to two Massachusetts-trained solar engineers who, after long years in the US, returned home to set up SunSource Energy, a Noida-headquartered company, which develops, engineers, procures, constructs and operates solar power plants and projects. Adarsh Das, chief executive of SunSource, was scribbling on a notepad, explaining net metering, the solar energy S-curve, generation-transmission-distribution intricacies and the government's plan to up the solar contribution to 20% of the country's energy needs. 

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