Policy

Swiss battery maker that intends to bring production lines to Gujarat has been helped along in a planned reduction of its debt pile by its domestic authorities. The way is now clear for a shareholder vote next Tuesday.

The iSTAR-C program of India’s International Solar Alliance (ISA) was adjudged an outstanding project during the Paris Peace Forum this month. The program is one of many ISA initiatives to develop solar resources in member countries. After the first assembly of the ISA, interim Director-General Upendra Tripathy tells pv magazine about the organization’s achievements and plans.

Supervising authority has given the state distribution company the green light to conduct three 500 MW solar tenders. The move marks the first procurement exercise held by TANGEDCO in almost 12 months.

India has become the world’s largest market for new renewable energy auctions and the second-largest destination for attracting clean energy investments, according to the latest Climatescope 2018 report by BloombergNEF.

Only three bidders have come forward for huge manufacturing-linked solar and solar-wind hybrid procurement exercises. The separate auctions – originally intended to drive 12.5 GW of new generation and 5 GW of manufacturing capacity – prompted figures of just 3.05 GW and 600 MW, respectively.

The Indian Ministries of External Affairs and Power, in collaboration with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), organized the South Asia Power Summit 2018, held recently in New Delhi. The daylong conference highlighted that diversity of energy resources in South Asian countries brings the opportunity to provide affordable, low-carbon energy in the region. The business case for enhanced energy trading in the region, and challenges faced in inter-country electricity trading were important elements of this discussion.

India’s Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) has ordered government agencies to reimburse nearly US$30 million incurred by solar power developers as additional capital expenditure under the Goods & Services Tax (GST) laws, which came into effect on July 1, 2017.

State is struggling to hit an ambitious distributed generation target that calls for another 1.6 GW of rooftop capacity within four years.

The projects, in Maharashtra, will be commissioned through a reverse auction with technical bidding to close on December 19. The deadline for the submission of financial bids and the date for the reverse auction after the opening of financial bids, will be published in due course.

India added 1.2 GW of large-scale projects in the third quarter of 2018-19, taking new capacity in the first half to 1.9 GW. The numbers are down 43% and 44%, respectively, on the same periods of the previous year, according to Bridge to India’s quarterly India Solar Compass.