Blogs
National Electricity Plan of limited use
18 April 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
About two weeks ago, the Central Electricity Authority (CEA), a statutory agency constituted under the Ministry of Power, released final National Electricity Plan for the five-year period beginning April 2017. The Plan is an important document – it should provide a roadmap for...
MNRE allows pass-through of duty risk
10 April 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
Last week, MNRE issued a clarification to its guidelines for competitive bidding of solar PV projects. The clarification allows inclusion of changes in duties and other cesses in Change in Law provisions in power purchase agreements. It effectively means that risk of any new duties or changes in duties including safeguard and/or anti-dumping duties arising after the “last date of bid...
Gujarat auction gets a tepid result
02 April 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
Gujarat conducted e-auction for a 500 MW utility scale PV solar tender last week. Capacity has been won by four developers at tariffs between INR 2.98 – 3.06/ kWh – Kalthia Engineering (50 MW, INR 2.98), Gujarat State Electricity Corporation (GSEC) (150 MW, INR 3.00), Acme (100 MW, INR 3.06) and Azure (200 MW, INR 3.06). Losing bidders include Hero, Adani, Shapoorji Pallonji, Mahindra,...
Uttar Pradesh shows open access promise
29 March 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
Uttar Pradesh (UP) has recently amended the Captive and Renewable Energy Regulations 2014 to provide 50% exemptions from transmission and wheeling charges for intra-state open access sale of solar power. The state agencies...
MNRE’s new quality policy creates confusion
26 March 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
MNRE’s proposed quality testing and standards regime is facing a difficult take-off. Policy ambiguity and lack of testing infrastructure have already led to multiple revisions in implementation timetable. The Indian RE sector has a major quality problem and MNRE intervention, long overdue, is highly welcome; The policy needs to be backed up with urgent investments in testing...
String inverters gaining market share in India
21 March 2018 | Mudit Jain
Share of string inverters in the Indian solar market is increasing rapidly. It went up from only 1% until 2016 to 9% in 2017 for new utility scale solar capacity commissioned. We expect the trend to accelerate even further in the coming years. Increased adoption of string inverters for utility scale projects is in line with experience in other international markets including USA and...
Rooftop solar attracts more financing
19 March 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
As the Indian rooftop solar market grows, it is attracting more attention from investors and financiers. Shell is rumoured to be entering the market in partnership with Fourth Partner, a leading rooftop solar EPC. Several...
India and France take star turns in ISA
12 March 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
International Solar Alliance (ISA) conducted a founding summit in Delhi over the last two days. The event was organized with great pomp with 21 heads of state attending besides Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi and the French President, Emmanuel Macron. There were several new announcements on financing, project schemes and partnerships although most of these appear vague. That makes it...
Open access solar continues to be mired in uncertainty
05 March 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
Karnataka’s attractive open access policy for solar projects is set to expire at the end of this month. That is leading to a rush in project development activity in the state, which already leads other states with a total installed open access based solar capacity of 334 MW. As much as 1,000 MW of new capacity is expected to be commissioned over February and March. Many large developers...
Trade protection for domestic manufacturers is misguided
28 February 2018 | Jyoti Gulia
While the solar industry anxiously awaits the safeguard duty decision, we have examined the rationale of policies favouring domestic manufacturing in a recent study. We have assessed the complete solar value chain – from manufacturing to project construction and operations – and evaluated each activity for employment and value creation to understand their overall impact on the...
Wind makes an emphatic case
26 February 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
In the latest wind auction for SECI 2,000 MW tender held on February 13, 2018, winning tariffs came out at INR 2.44 – 2.45/kWh. Winners include ReNew (400 MW), Sembcorp (300 MW), Inox (200 MW), Torrent Power (500 MW), Adani (250 MW), Alfanar (300 MW) and Engie (50 MW). There were five other participants including Sprng, Enel, Orange, Hero and Mytrah. The tender was oversubscribed by...
Duty announcement seems imminent
19 February 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
Since announcement of preliminary findings by Director General of Safeguards (DGS) last month, a decision on provisional safeguard duty has been anxiously awaited by the Indian solar industry. We understand that the government is leaning towards a 20-25% duty and the decision process is fairly...
