Blogs
ISTS OA – GNA regulation solves issues but implementation concerns remain
28 May 2024 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
The Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) fully operationalised the General Network Access (GNA) and Inter-State Transmission System (ISTS) Connectivity regulations in October 2022, ushering in a new era for India’s power sector. Given that sufficient time has passed since the inception of these regulations, we take a close look to evaluate the progress made so far…
US tariff move – a limited window of opportunity for Indian manufacturers
20 May 2024 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
On April 24, 2024, the American Alliance for Solar Manufacturing Trade Committee filed a petition with the US International Trade Commission and Department of Commerce, requesting imposition of anti-dumping and countervailing duties on solar cell imports from four Southeast Asian countries — Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand (hereon referred to as SEA). All solar cell imports from SEA…
Residential segment leads the way for rooftop solar sector growth
14 May 2024 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
In calendar year 2023, the residential market continued to show signs of healthy growth with estimated capacity addition up almost 50% y-o-y at 1,085 MW. Total rooftop solar capacity addition, though, was up only 8% y-o-y at 2,856 MW. addition in the corporate segment was down 7% y-o-y at 1,770 MW as many consumers deferred project implementation amid uncertainty in the module market and falling prices. Total installed rooftop solar capacity is estimated to have grown to 14,484 MW, with the share of…
Carbon credit allowance can distract from emission-reduction efforts
08 May 2024 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
The Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) recently permitted use of carbon credits for abating Scope 3 emissions, concluding a six-month long stakeholder consultation on evaluating the use of environmental certificates as a tool for supply chain decarbonisation. As per the decision, a third-party agency will be responsible for validating the quality of carbon credits. Rules and…
Domestic module manufacturers lining up with IPOs
29 April 2024 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
Alpex Solar, a small domestic module manufacturer with annual production capacity of 848 MW, successfully completed an INR 750 million IPO in February 2024. The IPO was oversubscribed by 300 times due to strong investor demand. The stock listed at 1.9x issue price and has since soared to 4.3x issue price trading at a fantastic P/E ratio of 323. Several other manufacturers are lining up with IPO…
ISTS charge waiver unlikely to be extended
22 April 2024 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
100% waiver of inter-state transmission system (ISTS) charges for full 25 year project life is set to be phased out shortly. The waiver is available to all renewable and storage projects completed by June 2025 with charges expected to be reinstated annually in increments of 25% for projects completed thereafter…
Maharashtra lays out a template for agri-solar
15 April 2024 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
Maharashtra has allocated a remarkable 9,000 MW agri-solar project capacity across 95 project developers. The state agency, MSEB Solar Agro Power Limited (MSAPL), had issued a flurry of tenders in the last three months for setting up distributed solar capacity in chunks of about 10-15 MW each for injection at individual substation level. There were two different kinds of tenders – for individual projects and for aggregated district level (about 200 MW each) – totaling 5,000 MW and 3,650 MW respectively.
Still searching for a firm power solution
08 April 2024 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
SECI recently completed the first ever auction for a “firm and dispatchable renewable energy” (FDRE) tender. The 1,500 MW tender was undersubscribed with only 600 MW of bids received and 480 MW awarded to JSW (180 MW), Hero (120), Serentica (100) and ReNew (80) at tariffs of INR 5.59-5.60/ kWh…
Lack of traceability hurting the Indian REC market
31 March 2024 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
India’s national power sector regulator, CERC, has made a series of amendments to the REC market framework over the last couple of years. After introduction of bilateral trading, removal of price bands and extending instrument validity forever from December 2022 onwards, it made RECs technology agnostic from October 2023 onwards. Buyers on exchanges can no longer trace RECs…
ALMM chaos
26 March 2024 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
MNRE’s last ALMM order had exempted projects commissioned by March 2024 from ALMM requirement. The government issued an amendment in February providing further relaxation bowing to project developer concerns around insufficient availability of high efficiency domestic modules. The amendment sought to waive the requirement completely for open access projects and for other projects…
BESS cost reduction improving adoption outlook
18 March 2024 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
GUVNL has concluded an auction for a 250 MW/ 500 MWh standalone battery storage tender. The batteries will be deployed at a state transmission sub-station for providing energy arbitrage, load shifting and other applications. Bidders were required to quote a flat capacity charge for providing two operational cycles per day over twelve years. Gensol and Indigrid have won 70 MW and 180 MW capacities with bids of INR 4.48 and 4.49 million/ MW/ month respectively. JSW, Hero, NTPC, ACME, SJVN and EDF were the other bidders with bids ranging…
Project developers facing equity crunch
11 March 2024 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
India’s buoyant public equity market is eagerly lapping up renewable energy stocks. Alpex Solar, a relatively small module manufacturer with total capacity of only 450 MW per annum, completed an INR 744 million (USD 9 million) IPO in February 2024 with over 300x response to its issue. The stock is now trading at a stupendous 3x offer price and over 200x annual earnings. IREDA’s INR 6.4 billion (USD 77 million) IPO in November 2023 was oversubscribed by 39x and the stock now trades at 4.6x its offer…
