Anand Kumar

A 1987-batch IAS of Jharkand cadre, Indu Shekhar Chaturvedi will replace Anand Kumar who has been assigned the Ministry of Culture.

The Indian government is working on the creation of a Rs 10,000 crore (US$1.3 billion) alternative investment fund to provide payments to PV developers.

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.

An AFP newswire report this week said Anand Kumar had announced plans for 30 GW of generation capacity in Gujarat and 25 GW in Rajasthan, all of it along a 20-25km strip of semi arid land on the border.

The country has so far achieved around 80 GW of installed renewable energy capacity in chasing “175 GW by 2022” target. De-dieselisation of farms and railways ranks high on the Modi government’s priority list to push solar adoption.

The Indian government is considering the step following complaints about China Sunergy defaulting on PV module supplies to solar project developers Acme Solar, RattanIndia and Refex Energy. Notably, last year a German EPC company Goldbeck Solar had a similar experience with the Chinese supplier.

Considering the remarkable advances made by the solar sector since the Rio ‘Earth Summit’ of 1992, PV was notable by its absence at the Convention of Parties climate change summit held by the UN in Poland.

The Indian government has finally clearly stated its solar objectives, and unveiled its plans for speeding up the work required to achieve them. The government is confident of achieving its 100 GW solar goal by 2022. The issue of rooftop solar is still to be addressed, however.

Under proposed ‘rent a roof’ policy, solar developers will rent rooftop space to install a PV array and offer to lease to each household and then feed the solar power to the grid, said MNRE Secretary Anand Kumar.