Blogs
Five charts summarising RE development in 2018
14 January 2019 | Surbhi Singhvi
2018 was the first year to see a dip in RE capacity addition in India. The highest reduction was in wind (-52%), followed by utility scale solar (-29%) but rooftop solar continued to grow healthily (+73%). Figure 1: RE capacity addition, MW Source: BRIDGE TO INDIA research 2018 saw a huge surge in new tenders. However, actual project allocation was much less due to multiple...
Can ‘power for all’ turn into a reality?
07 January 2019 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
The Indian government’s revised deadline for providing universal electricity access to all households under the SAUBHAGYA scheme lapsed on 31 December, 2018. The scheme portal shows that 24 million households, 97% of the revised target, have been electrified since October 2017. The only states yet to achieve...
The curious case of central and state government tender mix
31 December 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
MNRE is reportedto have asked states to proactively issue more RE tenders and reduce dependence on central government agencies. MNRE’s advice states that states are better positioned to structure tenders based...
2018 – one step forward, two steps backward
17 December 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
As 2018 comes to an end, we take stock of the progress made by the RE sector in the year. After finishing 2017 on a record high, total capacity addition is expected to fall by 32%. The fall is most notable in wind (down 46%), followed by utility scale solar (down 36%). In contrast, rooftop solar has grown by...
Maharashtra bets on agriculture feeder projects
10 December 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
Last year, the state government of Maharashtra had announced a solar agriculture feeder scheme with the aim to solarise such feeders across the state. Under the scheme, developers would be selected through competitive bidding for project sizes up to...
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...
