Solar and/or wind are said to be the cheapest source of new energy generation in all major economies, apart from Japan, finds BloombergNEF. It adds that China’s utility-scale PV market has contracted by over a third this year; and that battery costs are set to drop a further 66% by 2030, driven by EV adoption.

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.

Reeling from a no-show from bidders at various auctions, the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) has raised the ceiling price for two of its mega tenders by 10 paise (US$0.0014) each.

The Indian company will build a 100 MW solar park in the Akërni salt flats, near Vlorë. A 50 MW section of the plant will sell power to the local distributor at €59.9 per MWh over a 15-year period, while the remaining portion will sell electricity at market prices.

The first companies are demonstrating that today it can be worthwhile commercially to back electric vehicles in combination with solar generation and storage. Particularly in the case of public charging stations, solar power used for electric vehicle charging could become the basis for a profitable operator model in the future.

Developers gave short shrift to gloomy predictions about depreciation, protectionism and tax headwinds as tendering and auction figures soared, but they shied away from the tough price caps set for SECI’s procurement exercises.

With the Solar Energy Corporation of India having already proposed 10 GW of solar be located on artificial bodies of water over the next three years, Shailesh Mishra has mooted ambitious plans at four more locations.

While the timelines for PV power plant execution and completion of manufacturing facilities are now more realistic, production obligations – especially for capacity utilization – need to be revisited.