solar power in all parts of India exceeding 8% of its total area which are unproductive barren and devoid of vegetation. Part of wastelands (32,000 square km) when installed with solar power plants can produce 2400 billion kWh of electricity (two times the total generation in 2013-14) with land productivity/yield of 0.9 million Rs per acre (3 Rs/kWh price) which is at par with many industrial areas and many times more than the best productive irrigated agriculture lands. Moreover, these solar power units are not dependent on the supply of any raw material and are self productive. There is unlimited scope for solar electricity to replace all fossil fuel energy requirements (natural gas, coal, lignite, and crude oil) if all the marginally productive lands are occupied by solar power plants in the future. The solar power potential of India can meet perennially to cater to per capita energy consumption at par with USA/Japan for the peak population in its demographic transition. Solar thermal power The installed capacity of commercial solar thermal power plants in India is 227.5 MW with 50 MW in Andhra Pradesh and 177.5 MW in Rajasthan. Solar thermal plants are emerging as cheaper (6 Euro ¢/kWh) and clean load following power plants compared to fossil fuel power plants. They can cater the load/ demand perfectly and work as base load power plants when the extracted solar energy is found excess in a day. Proper mix of solar thermal and solar PV can fully match the load fluctuations without the need of costly battery storage. Synergy with irrigation water pumping and hydropower stations The major disadvantage of solar power (PV type only) is that it can not produce electricity during the nighttime and cloudy daytime also. In India, this disadvantage can be overcome by installing pumped-storage hydroelectricity stations. The ultimate electricity requirement for river water pumping (excluding groundwater pumping) is 570 billion kWh to pump one cubic meter of water for each square meter area by 125 m height on average for irrigating 140 million hectares of net sown area (42% of total land) for three crops in a year. This is achieved by utilising all the usable river waters by interlinking Indian rivers and envisaging coastal reservoirs. These river water pumping stations would also be envisaged with pumped-storage hydroelectricity features to store the surplus electricity available during the daytime and reconvert to electricity during the nighttime. Also,