Blogs
Customs duty finally on the anvil
26 June 2020 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
After a year of deliberation, MNRE has announced that basic customs duty (BCD) shall be levied on all cell and module imports from 1 August 2020 onwards. The proposal, pending approval from The Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of...
Border tension with China does not augur well
22 June 2020 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
Border tension with China does not augur well This week saw violent clashes between Indian and Chinese armed forces. 20 Indian soldiers have died in reportedly the worst clashes in the last 58 years. These events have revived longstanding distrust of China and lent an edge to the precarious relationship between the two countries. There is growing political chorus for boycott of Chinese goods...
Financial bonanza for Adani and Azure?
12 June 2020 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
SECI has approved award of an astounding 12,000 MW project capacity in its 7,000 MW manufacturing-linked project tender. The auction was held back in January 2020 with Adani Green and Azure announced as winners with tariff bids of INR 2.92/ kWh. The two developers had bid for 4,000 MW and 2,000 MW project capacity but are being...
Real-time power trading a win-win for power producers and consumers
06 June 2020 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
Power exchanges in India started offering a new ‘Real Time Market’ (RTM) trading window at the beginning of this week. The market features 48 trading slots, half an hour each, during the day for delivery of power within one hour of...
COVID-19 to cause serious damage to renewables
31 May 2020 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
COVID-19 infections in India, relatively low so far, have started rising rapidly. New cases were reported at 8,380 on 30 May 2020, up 4.6x in the last month. Ironically, the lockdown is still being relaxed to avoid economic hardship and under pressure from the business community. Almost all social and business activities would be...
Oil & gas players set to carve a bigger role
23 May 2020 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
Shell, a global oil & gas major, recently announced accelerated goals in a mission to become zero energy business. The company is seeking to completely eliminate all emissions from its manufacturing business by 2050 and also wants to reduce...
RTC auction a small step towards firm renewable power
15 May 2020 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
RTC auction a small step towards firm renewable power SECI completed auction for its 400 MW round-the-clock (RTC) tender last week. Entire capacity has been awarded to ReNew Power at a tariff of INR 2.90/ kWh. Other bidders included Greenko (400 MW, INR 2.91/ kWh) and HES Infra (100, 3.91). Ayana had also submitted a...
Project progress grinding down
08 May 2020 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
India added total utility scale solar and wind capacity of 715 and 328 MW respectively in the quarter ending March. These are meagre returns; the combined total represents the weakest quarterly progress on capacity addition in the last two years. For the financial year 2019-20, total utility scale capacity addition was 7,408 MW, 34% below the high of two years ago. Progress over next two...
Draft Electricity Act amendments a lame affair
30 April 2020 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
The Ministry of Power has issued another set of draft amendments to The Electricity Act, 2003. It is the third attempt to amend the Act in as many years. The latest...
Government financial institutions becoming lenders of last resort
22 April 2020 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
The Ministry of Power is supposedly working on a plan to use central government-owned financial institutions (FIs) including Power Finance Corporation (PFC), Rural Electrification Corporation (REC) and Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA) to fund DISCOMs in wake of the Coronavirus disruption. As per news reports,
Webinar: impact of COVID-19 on the Indian renewable sector
20 April 2020 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
BRIDGE TO INDIA hosted a webinar on 30 March 2020 to discuss impact of COVID-19 on the renewable sector in India. Speakers from a cross-section of players from the industry discussed impact on equipment supply chain and projects under construction (an estimated 10 GW where on-site activity is currently under progress) as well as...
Maharashtra offers relief to rooftop solar
15 April 2020 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
The Maharashtra regulator, Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission (MERC), has made a series of positive announcements for rooftop solar market in the state. It has accepted demand from MSEDCL, a state government owned company and the largest DISCOM in the state, to levy grid usage charges on all new installations over 10 kW capacity but only once total installed capacity in the state...
