08 February 2014 | Jasmeet Khurana
Barely two weeks ago, after being challenged by the Tamil Nadu Spinning Mills Association and Tamil Nadu Electricity Consumers’ Association, the Appellate Tribunal for Electricity termed the state’s Solar Purchase Obligations (SPOs) as illegal. Tamil Nadu had an original and rather innovative plan to drive the demand for solar power through procurement...
31 January 2014 | Jasmeet Khurana
On 29th January 2014, associates from the newly organized Solar Power Developers’ Association (SPDA) met Dr. Farooq Abdullah, Minister of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), and Tarun Kapoor, Joint Secretary MNRE, for the first time to discuss and examine critical issues from the perspective of the project development and investment community in India. For this meeting, SPDA was represented...
11 January 2014 | Jasmeet Khurana
Media reports claim that Kerala’s ambitious rooftop plan to set up 10,000 off-grid solar power plants would be missing the deadline. However, based on our interaction with the officials, it seems that the program is likely to be completed well ahead of schedule as per the December 2014 deadline set by MNRE. As of now, around 6,000 plants have been commissioned and the rest are already in...
07 January 2014 | Jasmeet Khurana
Developers are in the process of finalizing their bids for National Solar Mission (NSM) projects. The use of Viability Gap Funding (VGF) mechanism for the first time, resulting in significantly different cash flow profiles, poses many interesting questions for developers. Financial structuring will play a very important role in determining bid outcomes. SECI has the right to claw back VGF in...
04 January 2014 | Jasmeet Khurana
Developers are in the process of finalizing their bids for National Solar Mission (NSM) projects. The use of Viability Gap Funding (VGF) mechanism for the first time, resulting in significantly different cash flow profiles, poses many interesting questions for developers. Financial structuring will play a very important role in determining bid outcomes. As VGF is disbursed only after...
17 December 2013 | Jasmeet Khurana
Last week, Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) announced results for third phase of allocations under the rooftop PV projects scheme in select cities. A capacity of 8.75 MW has been allocated across 21 projects in nine cities: Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune, Palatana, Chandigarh and Gwalior. Capacities allocated to individual project developers range between 250 kWp to...
03 December 2013 | Jasmeet Khurana
29 October 2013 | Jasmeet Khurana
Tamil Nadu is expected to issue guidelines for subsidy to be provided to residential rooftop systems in the state (refer). This is expected to be similar to the rooftop solar scheme earlier announced in Kerala (
22 October 2013 | Jasmeet Khurana
According to a Crisil research note (refer), pure-play power project developers in India are finding it difficult to compete for solar projects against investors that have entered the segment primarily to avail the tax incentives. An investor...
08 October 2013 | Jasmeet Khurana
The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has released its revised draft guidelines for a capacity of 750 MW of solar PV under batch one of phase two of the National Solar Mission (NSM) (refer to this document for the latest draft). SECI...
