Blogs
Spot price spike unlikely to have any impact on solar power
01 October 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
Spot prices for power on the energy exchange in India touched an all-time high of INR 17.61/ kWh (USD cents 24) last week. Average daily price on October 1, 2018 shot up to INR 7.64 (USD cents 11), about 150% higher than average for last year. Trading volumes have also simultaneously shot up by about 18% over last year. The price spike owes largely to short-term supply and demand side...
Tamil Nadu issues a ‘feel good’ draft solar policy
27 September 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
Tamil Nadu Energy Development Authority (TEDA) has released a draft solar policy for comments. The draft policy envisions a total installed capacity of 8,884 MW by 2022; 40% (3,553 MW) of this capacity is expected to be added by rooftop solar systems. Key proposed provisions in the policy are: Gross as well as net metering proposed to be allowed; group metering and virtual net metering have...
International strategic investors hedging their bets in India
24 September 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
Hongkong’s CLP Group has agreed to sell 40% equity stake in its Indian subsidiary, CLP India, to CDPQ, a Canadian pension fund. Meanwhile,
Power sector reform still a distant dream
21 September 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
The Ministry of Power has proposed a number of progressive ideas for the electricity sector in the form of draft amendments to the National Electricity Act and National Tariff Policy. Proposed amendments include obligating DISCOMs to supply...
Haryana’s OA solar market set to take-off
17 September 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
Haryana Electricity Regulatory Commission (HERC) has recently issued regulations that exempt solar power plants from transmission/wheeling charges, CSS and additional surcharge for 10 years from date of commissioning. The waivers are applicable for an aggregate capacity of 500 MW. The...
Unremitting price focus a major challenge for the Indian solar sector
10 September 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
MNRE recently advised SECI to revise ceiling tariff downwards in new utility scale solar tenders to INR 2.68 (2.50 without any safeguard duty), a reduction of over 8% on the prevailing level of INR 2.93. The...
Government no closer to unlocking the manufacturing puzzle
03 September 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
SECI has made several amendments to its RFS for the integrated project development and module manufacturing tender. The big change is reduction in manufacturing capacity from 5 GW to 3 GW. MNRE received strong representations from the private sector with most companies not happy...
Wind sector pick up eighteen months away
28 August 2018 | Shipra Arora
India added 1.8 GW of wind capacity in FY 2018 (down 67% over FY 2017). We estimate that capacity addition will further slow down to about 1 GW per annum over the next two years before picking up again. The slowdown is largely a result of the sector moving...
Slow project progress poses a risk to government targets
27 August 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
702 MW of new utility scale solar power generation capacity was commissioned in Q2 2018 taking total installed capacity to 24,941 MW on June 30, 2018. Capacity addition was 11% below our estimate and 60% below the scheduled commissioning target. It was also 82% lower than actual capacity addition in the previous quarter. Accordingly, we estimate total utility scale solar capacity addition in...
Floating solar slow to take-off
20 August 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
In December last year, SECI announced an EOI for 10 GW of floating solar projects, which was later adopted into the government’s revised 227 GW RE target for March 2022. Several large floating solar projects have been announced subsequently over the last few months. But bid deadlines have been...
MSEDCL fights back against rooftop solar
13 August 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company (MSEDCL), Maharashtra’s largest DISCOM, has proposed a series of measures to counter growth of rooftop solar in its latest petition to the state regulator. The proposed measures include: i)...
Tracker market slowing down
10 August 2018 | Surbhi Singhvi
In the midst of increasing competition, falling tariffs and shrinking profit margins, the market for solar trackers picked up sharply in India in 2017. Developers were increasingly keen to use trackers to enhance project performance to maximize returns. Commissioned capacity using trackers increased from 86 MW in 2016 to 1,427 MW in 2017. India being one of the largest and fastest growing...
