Installations

Clean energy investment across 104 emerging markets fell sharply by $36 billion in year 2018 from the previous year, even as their coal burn surged approximately 500 terawatt hours to a record high of 6.9 thousand terawatt-hours. Though the decline in clean energy investments was driven largely by China, inflows to India and Brazil also slipped by $2.4 billion and $2.7 billion, respectively. India, however, emerged as the market with greatest renewables potential.

As of October 31, a cumulative renewable energy capacity of 83.38 GW was installed in the country, which included 31.69 GW from solar, 37.09 GW from wind, 9.95 GW from biomass and 4.65 GW from small hydro.

The recently proposed guidelines allow electricity cost reduction of only Rs 3.64/unit for commercial and industrial consumers, which is not even sufficient to recover the capital costs of setting up the solar infrastructure.

The technology brings environmental, economic and social benefits, says the senior VP of Ciel et Terre’s Indian business. However, the nation’s obsession with price dictating business decisions, he adds, ignores the truism that ‘in the long run, cheap products lead to more cost’.

December 3 is the new bidding deadline for the grid-connected solar project that is to be set up on develop-build-demonstrate-transfer basis anywhere in India. Techno-commercial bids will open on December 4.

Bids can be submitted till December 27 for the project which shall come up at the state-run power producer’s Panchet project in Dhanbad district. The project shall be awarded through tariff-based domestic bidding followed by reverse auction.

While 95.67 MW has already been installed on various railways buildings, 248.46 MW capacity—awarded by Railway Energy Management Company Limited—is under different stages of execution.

The order enabling payment of a rupee for every kilowatt-hour generated by off-grid PV systems has been extended until October 2021 because of anticipated delays in the state electricity board hitting its renewable purchase obligation.

Dhaka has heeded complaints about Indian manufacturers allegedly dumping sub-standard PV products over the border and issued a requirement for modules, inverters, charge controllers and batteries to attain IEC electrical standards.

Developers have until December 3 to submit bids for the project which shall come up on dams at Haripura (27 MW) and Tumariya (13 MW) in district Udham Singh Nagar. The project will be awarded through tariff-based competitive bidding.