India

Battery swapping is the ultimate expression of a sharing economy in which assets are shared to facilitate business operations—says E-Chargeup Solutions, which recently launched a battery swapping station for e-rickshaws in Noida city of Uttar Pradesh.

Touted to be one of India’s largest rooftop installations, the captive plant uses 25,770 photovoltaic panels covering 63,000 sq.m of available roof space and producing 12.2 million KWh of electricity annually.

The investment raises CDPQ’s equity interest in Azure Power to 49.4% from 41.4%. The proceeds will be used by the developer to fund its current projects.

The revolving credit facility will help the Hyderabad headquartered distributed solar developer finance new projects as it looks to add about 250 MW of capacity this year.

Developers have until December 30 to bid for the grid-connected plants that shall come up on the land within or around the premises of Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited’s substations. The plants are to be developed on turnkey basis.

Under KUSUM scheme, the state government will help farmers in setting up an aggregate 75 MW capacity of grid-connected solar plants—in capacities of up to 2 MW—on their barren or cultivable land.

California-based SimpliPhi Power, which designs and manufactures lithium ferro phosphate (LFP) energy storage systems, has brought off-grid power to everything from the giant moon on Conan O’Brien’s talk show set to U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, to rooftops for Whole Foods and Airbnb. As the company prepares to enter into India, CEO and President Catherine Von Burg tells pv magazine why their LFP technology is best suited for India and their plans for the country.

The NYSE-listed developer will set up a 500 MW cell and module production line as its manufacturing commitment under the SECI tender. The tender aimed to secure 2 GW of new annual manufacturing capacity by offering 7 GW of power project permits. Azure has an agreement with an Indian solar panel manufacturer to jointly establish the new production facilities with the developer holding a majority stake in the enterprise.

The minister’s statement comes at a time when analysts fear that potential disregard of past contractual agreements in Andhra Pradesh, along with the regular curtailment of renewable energy facilities and delayed payments to developers, may drive foreign investors away from India’s renewable energy sector.

The solar plants commissioned at Dibrugarh (Assam), Gaya (Bihar) and Gondia (Maharashtra) take the Kolkata based module manufacturer and EPC contractor’s cumulative airport project portfolio to more than 4 MW.