Blogs
Rooftop solar needs a new policy paradigm
03 December 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
BRIDGE TO INDIA has just completed the latest round of rooftop solar data compilation exercise. India added new rooftop solar capacity of 1,538 MW in the year ending September 2018, up a remarkable 75% over previous year. Total installed capacity is estimated to have reached 3,399 MW as on 30 September 2018. Robust growth even in the face of safeguard duty and GST uncertainty reflects huge...
Floating solar needs new technical standards
29 November 2018 | Shipra Arora
SECI recently completed auction for India’s first large-scale floating solar plant. The 50 MW project at Rihand dam in Uttar Pradesh was won by Shapoorji Pallonji with a bid of INR 3.29/ kWh. The winning tariff is about 10% higher than observed in respective ground-mounted auctions. Floating solar is still in nascent stages of development in India with installed capacity of just 2.7 MW at...
Chinese companies boost their presence in the Indian inverter market
26 November 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
After occupying a dominant position in module supply, the Chinese companies are aggressively expanding their presence in the Indian solar inverter market. Their combined market share in utility scale projects in the latest available 12-month period has gone up to 46% from 1% just three years ago. 3 of the top 5 players are from China. There is a similar story in rooftop solar with aggregate...
Module industry going through step changes
19 November 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
Global solar demand is expected to fall for the first time ever this year – to about 85-90 GW from 103 GW last year. Most of the leading countries including China, India, US and Japan are reporting significant declines in capacity addition. Result – multi-crystalline module prices have fallen to USD...
Gujarat aims for the sky
15 November 2018 | Arti Mishra Saran
In June 2018, the state government of Gujarat launched a new scheme – Suryashakti Kisan Yojna (SKY) – for developing distributed solar plants in rural areas. Under the scheme, farmers can set up solar PV plants up to a capacity of 1.25 kW per horsepower of contracted load. The pilot phase envisions a total capacity of 175 MW with a total capital cost of INR 9 billion (USD 0.13 billion)....
RE market forced to consolidate through the primary route
13 November 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
In the first nine months of this year, 10,081 MW of utility scale solar capacity has been auctioned, up nearly 70% over the entire year 2016. A close look at the auction results shows some very interesting trends – despite the sharp increase in auctioned capacity, number of winning bidders has fallen to 26 from 49 two years ago. Average winning bid size has increased to 124 MW from 63 MW. And...
Sputtering RE needs decisive government help
05 November 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
India added total solar and wind capacity of 2,074 MW (up 70% over previous quarter) in Q3 2018. Total installed capacity reached 61.1 GW on 30 September 2018 – including 23.2 GW utility solar, 3.4 GW rooftop solar and 34.5 GW wind. Quarterly capacity addition has been highly erratic because of uncertain auction time-table; The sector faces several challenges related to government...
Solar sector faces growing water risk
30 October 2018 | Vinay Rustagi
India’s solar sector is growing rapidly – total installed capacity has risen from just 1 GW in 2012 to over 25 GW at present and is expected to go up by over 10 GW every year. Fast growth and concentration in water-stressed areas exposes solar to growing water risks – scarcity, rising cost, poor quality, conflict with other social and economic uses and environmental degradation. We...
RE debt financing gets tougher
29 October 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
RE projects are facing increasing financing challenges. Liquidity in the Indian financial system has dried up considerably pushing up cost of debt finance by 1.0-1.5% over last year. To make matters worse, we...
Impressions from an international module conference
25 October 2018 | Vinay Rustagi
I attended one of the world’s leading solar module industry events – PV ModuleTech in Penang, Malaysia – this week. There were about 200 participants from across the world including mainly all leading module manufacturers, various testing agencies and independent engineers. There were also a few project developers and investors such as Brookfield, Shell, 8minuteenergy, Clara and...
Solar sector needs robust quality standards
23 October 2018 | Surbhi Singhvi
A recent report by PI Berlin, supported by MNRE, NISE, SECI and KFW, has highlighted major risks facing Indian PV projects – sub-optimal design, inadequate EPC contracts, poor installation and lack of proper maintenance. The study confirms longstanding concerns about poor quality in the Indian solar...
NTPC jumps into the bidding arena
22 October 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
Uttar Pradesh conducted auction for its 500 MW utility scale solar tender on 10 October 2018. Winning tariffs came at between INR 3.17-3.23/ kWh (USD cents 4.4). Capacity was won by NTPC (160 MW), Adani (100 MW), Sukhbir Agro, Eden, Solar Arise and Avaada...
