Highlights

Mumbai-headquartered Virescent Infrastructure, set up by US investor KKR to own and operate renewable energy assets in India, has raised INR 4.6 billion (US$62 million) through its renewable energy-focused infrastructure investment trust (InvIT). Canada’s Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo) led the funding.

An Indian research group has built a perovskite cell that has a metal contact based on copper, instead of expensive gold. The device showed almost the same efficiency as a cell developed with gold metallization but its stability was much lower. In order to overcome this issue, the scientists suggest using a metal contact made of a thin layer of gold and a thicker, overlying copper layer.

India’s open-access solar installations in the first half of 2021 were 1,230% up from 47 MW installed in 1H 2020. Uttar Pradesh led the installations, followed by Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.

The IEC/EN61215 and IEC/EN61730-certified panel features 144 half-cells based on M10 wafers and a 10-busbar design. Its operating temperature coefficient is -0.341% per degree Celsius and its power tolerance reaches up to 5%.

The Indian government has created a strong balance between industrial policy as well as trade policy, which provides companies like First Solar an ideal opportunity to establish their manufacturing facilities in India, according to First Solar chief executive officer Mark Widmar.

The State-owned hydropower producer has landed one-fifth of the 5 GW grid-connected solar capacity tendered under the second phase of the Central Public Sector Undertaking (CPSU) Scheme. It won the project by quoting a viability gap funding (VGF) requirement of INR 44.72 lakh per MW.

Multiple factors can affect the lifespan of a residential battery energy storage system. We examine the life of batteries in Part 3 of our series.

Rising efficiencies and the plummeting cost of solar modules over the past few years, recent months notwithstanding, are leading innovators toward ideas that may look unusual in the current tracker-dominated world of large-scale solar parks. Advocates of the new approaches argue that they leave traditional models looking decidedly flat by comparison.

Adani and Reliance New Energy, along with Jindal India Solar and Shirdi Sai Electricals, are the top scorers in the shortlist released for the production-linked incentives (PLI) scheme for high-efficiency module manufacturing. The list also includes 14 other companies vying for the incentives. The PLI requirement quoted by the shortlisted applicants will decide the beneficiaries.  

The Indian solar manufacturer currently has 750 MW of cell and module factory in Hyderabad and plans to more than triple this capacity with the addition of 2 GW mono PERC. The capacity augmentation is planned over the next two years with an investment of INR 1,200 crore. The equity capital from GEF will support the expansion.