Procurement

The 2,000ha installation, which will surpass in scale a 150 MW plant in China’s Anhui province, will reportedly require a INR3,000 crore investment.

Feeder segregation, i.e., the installation of dedicated electricity supply lines for agriculture, is often celebrated as the solution to the electricity utilities’ pain point of free or highly subsidized electricity supply for agriculture. But does it address the root cause of the issue?

Ankit Kapasi and Kishore Ganesan from SOFIES India are working on Solar Waste Action Plan (SWAP) project in India, which is looking to investigate both the technical and economic feasibility of a PV module recycling system in the country. The pilot has been funded by Signify Foundation and Doen Foundation. The team at Sofies is working closely with technology partner Poseidon Solar and has recently established the first PV recycling pilot plant in September 2020. The duo spoke to pv magazine about their plant’s techno-commercial feasibility and the Indian eco-system’s readiness for PV module recycling.

The Solar Energy Corporation of India, NTPC, NHPC and other state-owned organizations have been directed to reduce RE contracts’ performance security from 5-10% to 3% of the contract value under the Finance ministry’s order dated November 12, 2020

Bids are invited to supply an aggregate 6,568,000 quantity of five-busbar multicrystalline and mono-crystalline PERC silicon solar cells in peak output ratings of 4.62Wp, 4.67Wp, 4.72Wp, 5.27Wp, 5.44Wp and 5.62Wp. The delivery period is three months.

The Distribution Companies (DISCOMs) shall be the implementing agency for agricultural feeder-level solar plants and shall incentivize farmers for consuming power below the benchmark consumption for their area—an important measure for conserving groundwater level.

The two newly introduced green contracts, daily and weekly, are in addition to already operational intra-day and day-ahead contingency contracts in the green market. 

The Solar Energy Corporation of India has issued amendments to the procurement and extended the bidding deadline a second time.

Climate Policy Initiative and REConnect Energy have developed an innovative mechanism called Garuda to retire old, inefficient thermal plants with equivalent renewable capacity. The scheme proposes a blended tariff that would include the normal tariff for the new renewable energy plant plus the cost of decommissioning the old fossil fuel plant, while making the provision for green bonds to finance RE. 

Indian solar sector remained buoyant even amid Covid pandemic as 15.3 GW of solar capacity (including solar-wind hybrid) was sanctioned in the current year’s first half itself. However, returns expectations from equity investments rose from around 14% in the first half of 2019 to 16-17%, indicating heightened risk perceptions among investors.