Italy

REC will use the funding to support projects which meet rigorous environmental standards, promote renewable energy and contribute to reducing carbon emissions.

Webdyn’s Indian unit has supplied remote monitoring tech and hybrid power management solutions for 4.2 GW of solar plants since 2015, while Italian inverter maker Fimer has supplied its 1 MVA inverters for a new integrated solar-plus-storage project in Gujarat.

The Italian utility, fresh from securing its first 300 MW of PV generation capacity in the recent, record-setting tender held by SECI, has teamed up with the state-owned Norwegian Investment Fund to commit to further clean energy facilities in India.

Fimer’s takeover of the inverter business of the Swiss conglomerate will not affect job numbers at ABB’s Indian production facilities, according to the new owner of the combined business.

The annual global outlook report for solar published by IHS Markit notes there was no real uptick in the amount of new capacity added last year, compared with the returns seen in 2018. That is likely to kill any hope India has of overtaking the U.S. as the world’s second biggest solar market in 2020.

Market intelligence company Navigant Research has developed a country forecast of the global market. Incentives and pricing will be the main driver of installations, though the market will continue to be concentrated in certain key regions, including India, for now.

While China hosts the lion’s share of production capacity for solar modules, many other parts of the world harbor the ambition to build manufacturing industries of their own. Italy’s Ecoprogetti is building production lines all over the world in 2019, and pv magazine had the chance to catch up with the family-owned company’s CEO Laura Sartore, who sees India and the Middle East as the key markets for the PV production equipment business.

The fate of the clutch of 500 MW-plus projects due to break ground this year could determine whether such ambitious schemes have a viable future, says Wood Mackenzie in its solar 2019 forecast. And the Indian market should brace for consolidation, add the analysts, because of aggressive reverse-auction tariff pricing.