Asia

With the power minister hinting a new renewable energy tariff policy could be in the works, the federal agency responsible for solar – which has come under fire after the latest delay to a troubled PV manufacturing tender – has boasted of the volume of clean power it has signed deals for recently.

The goal of the ‘SuryaKranti Solar Challenge’ is to develop a deeper collaboration between Indian industry and its engineering colleges. The event, on the lines of World Solar Challenge-Australia, aims to drive the culture of innovation in India by trying to solve a great challenge of climate change: building a sun powered car and driving it for a significant distance.

Indian module makers are gearing up for an end-of-year surge of procurement for solar projects in the country and hoping that their investments in incorporating global manufacturing benchmarks will translate into enhanced sales offtake.

Technical consultancy DNV GL has published its Energy Transition Outlook 2019. While the electric vehicle, storage and renewable energy industries are likely to see significant rises in demand, the sobering conclusion is the world will miss carbon reduction targets by a long shot.

The Solar Energy Corporation of India has extended the deadline yet again for a procurement exercise originally intended to secure 5 GW of PV manufacturing capacity and 10 GW of generation assets 13 months ago. The deadline for bidding for 2 GW of production and 6 GW of generation capacity is now October 11.

The financial failings of India’s electric companies have once again come to the fore as the power minister warned the seven worst offending states the lengthening debts they owe renewables developers could be recovered via the National Company Law Tribunal.

With this addition, the total installed renewable energy capacity of the state-owned power generator has exceeded 1 GW.

With developers facing land constraints, a huge pipeline of floating PV projects is currently in the early stages of development in India. While the outlook for solar on water in the fast-moving solar marketplace appears bright, there is much industry learning still to be had and a steep learning curve for component suppliers and developers alike.

The state with power deficit of up to 20% provides the opportunity to scale up the solar capacity to 2 GW by 2022, which would require an investment of Rs11,000 crore.

The National Solar Energy Federation of India (NSEFI) is continuing to step up its efforts to ensure the quality of large scale solar projects. The body is now looking for stakeholder input into its new best practice guidelines for PV power plant projects, as a part of its ongoing Quality Taskforce initiative.