Rooftop solar addition increased 112% y-o-y in second quarter

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A new report by the CEEW Centre for Energy Finance (CEEW-CEF) says India’s grid-scale solar capacity addition in the second quarter (July-Sept) of FY 2020-21 was impacted partly owing to Covid-prompted supply chain disruptions. 

Grid-scale solar addition during the period stood at 529 MW against 1692 MW in Q2 FY2019-20.

In contrast, rooftop solar picked up with 399 MW capacity added against 188 MW in the corresponding period last year.

Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Tamil Nadu led the growth in rooftop solar installations.

Solar (grid-scale and rooftop) continued to dominate among renewables categories, accounting for nearly 60% of the 1508 MW RE capacity (grid-scale solar, rooftop solar, wind and biomass/other RE sources) added in Q2 FY21.

The report said the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has allowed a five-month extension for grid-scale project commissioning on account of Covid-19. Noticeable RE capacity may be added in the future as the lockdown eases. 

Auctioned capacity

The CEEW-CEF report also highlighted that 3.2 GW of renewable capacity was auctioned in Q2 FY2020-21, which is slightly lower than the 4.4 GW (excluding 8 GW sanctioned as part of a manufacturing-linked upsizing of a solar auction from an earlier quarter) auctioned in Q1 FY21. 

Further, auctions for vanilla renewable energy projects gave way to auctions for blended generation mixes. Auctioning blended solar and wind projects is aimed at improving the transmission infrastructure utilization with higher capacity utilization. 

The top five developers’ share in the total project capacity sanctioned increased to 84% from 81% in the previous quarter and is expected to remain high going forward. 

Discom overdue

Discom overdues to power producers as of September 2020 stood at INR 1.4 lakh crore, representing a 50% increase compared to overdue in September 2019. However, the pace of increase in overdues dropped significantly to only 5% over the second quarter, compared to a 30% spike during Q1 FY21. 

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