Blogs
US safeguard duty to have nuanced implications for India
13 February 2018 | Mudit Jain
On 22nd January this year, the US government imposed 30% safeguard duty on imported solar cells and modules. The duty has been imposed for four years but will reduce by 5% every year. First 2.5 GW of imports every year shall be exempted from duties. As per WTO laws, imports from specified developing countries shall also be exempt from duties up to 3% of ‘total imports’ for individual...
It’s raining RE tenders in India
12 February 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
Gujarat Urja Vikas Nigam Limited (GUVNL), Gujarat government holding company for power distribution and transmission businesses in the state, announced a new 500 MW solar tender last week. The tender has an innovative provision in the form of a 500 MW green-shoe option. If GUVNL deems the lowest auction tariff attractive, it can exercise an option to increase the tender capacity up to 1,000 MW...
Energy goes missing from the Union Budget
07 February 2018 | Surbhi Singhvi
The Indian Finance Minister announced budget for the financial year 2018-19 last week. Being this government’s last budget before general elections due in early 2019, the focus was unsurprisingly on populist measures related to agriculture, rural development and health. But we still found it remarkable how little attention was paid to the entire energy sector. Focus is on rural...
Karnataka takes the lead in addressing duty concerns
05 February 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
Karnataka announced results of an 860 MW state solar tender last week. 11 developers have won 48 projects aggregating 760 MW at tariffs ranging between INR 2.94 – 3.54/ kWh. Big winners include Shapoorji Pallonji (185 MW), Acme (106 MW), ReNew (99 MW), Asian Fab Tech (85 MW) and Greenko (45 MW). Prominent losers include Aditya Birla, Avaada, Orange and EdF. 100 MW of the allocated capacity...
5 charts to capture 2017
31 January 2018 | Arti Mishra Saran
2017 was an extraordinary year in many ways for the Indian RE sector. The year will be known for record capacity addition, drastic fall in tariffs and start of the new trade investigations by Indian government into imports of cells and modules. We look at 5 charts summarizing key trends for the sector in 2017. Sector added record new capacity 2017 RE capacity addition is estimated to touch...
Indian RE players searching for new growth opportunities
29 January 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
A mix of policy uncertainty and slowing pipeline is forcing Indian project developers, suppliers and contractors to look for opportunities anew – inorganic expansion, looking at other business segments, new markets outside India or even diversification into other parts of the energy sector. Private sector players have scaled up hugely in anticipation of rapid year-on-year growth but if the...
2018, the morning after the night before
22 January 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
In our last few bulletins, we have written extensively upon the recent challenges faced by the RE sector. Here, we take a look at what to expect in 2018. The year has obviously started on a shaky note with the
Safeguard duty recommendation has solar sector on tenterhooks
15 January 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
Last week, we wrote a special bulletin about safeguard duty and its implications for various ongoing and under tender projects. The Director General of Safeguards’ recommendation for provisional duty of 70% has put the industry on tenterhooks. Investors, developers, contractors and...
Safeguard duty – Indian government scores an own goal
12 January 2018 | Vinay Rustagi
India’s Director General of Safeguards (DGS) has proposed a provisional duty of 70% for a period of 200 days on solar cells and modules. It has issued its recommendations in a preliminary report, completed within just a month of submission of the...
MNRE in a hyperactive mode; Indian manufacturers want safeguard duty
08 January 2018 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
Last few weeks have seen feverish activity in the RE sector with several bold announcements from the new MNRE leadership, keen to
Bidding frenzy continues in the renewable sector
29 December 2017 | Mudit Jain
Three major auctions were completed last week – two for solar projects by SECI (Bhadla solar park 500 MW and 250 MW respectively) and one for wind projects by Gujarat Urja Vikas Nigam (GUVNL, fully owned by Gujarat government) (500 MW). The solar projects were won by Hero Future (300 MW), Softbank (200 MW), Azure (200 MW) and ReNew (50 MW) at tariffs between INR 2.47-2.49/ kWh (USD 0.04), a...
2017, a year of some ‘highs’ but many ‘lows’
18 December 2017 | BRIDGE TO INDIA
As the year 2017 comes to an end, we take stock of the progress made by the Indian renewable energy sector. It was an eventful year, during which annual capacity addition is estimated to touch record levels of 10.9 GW (+66% over 2016) including utility scale solar (9 GW, +110%), rooftop solar (887 MW, +60%) and wind (4 GW, +11%). Utility scale solar capacity addition actually exceeded our...
