Indian developer Avaada Energy has raised the funds from the Asian Development Bank and European development institutions. The PV business will finance 2.4 GW of the 5 GW of solar capacity it hopes to secure over the next two years.

Rajasthan Electronics & Instruments (REIL) has invited bids to set up 1.7 MW (AC) of grid-connected PV projects with battery storage in India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The projects — to be implemented on a turnkey basis on Havelock Island (Swaraj Dweep) and Neil Island (Shaheed Dweep) — will be awarded through competitive bids, followed by a reverse auction.

India’s Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGTR) has concluded that duties ranging from $537 to $1,559/metric ton will be needed to offset the impact of imports of solar ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) sheets from China, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Thailand. The harshest duty — $1,559/metric ton (MT) — has been imposed on sheets supplied by all Saudi manufacturers other than Saudi Specialized Products.

The Indian government is considering the ban in response to complaints about China Sunergy allegedly defaulting on PV module shipments to project developers Acme Solar, RattanIndia and Refex Energy. Last year, German EPC specialist Goldbeck Solar reported a similar experience with the Chinese supplier.

Global electricity demand rose by 4% in 2018, nearly twice as fast as overall energy demand, as consumption edged up by 2.3%, according to a new report by the International Energy Agency (IEA). Renewables accounted for 45% of the growth in generating capacity.

Finnish clean-energy company Fortum has achieved a lithium-ion battery material recycling rate of over 80% — against what it says is a current rate of 50% — with a low-carbon hydrometallurgical recycling process.

Indian company Amtronics CC has paid Quantum Materials Corp an initial $500,000 as part of an agreement securing the right to manufacture quantum dots and thin-film quantum dot solar cells based on QMC technology for commercial supply in India. Construction has already started on a manufacturing facility in the state of Assam.

Aiming to localize production across the electric vehicle value chain, the government wants to support battery manufacturing at a gigawatt-scale. The initial focus will be on large-scale module and pack assembly plants in the new fiscal year, followed by integrated cell manufacturing by 2021-22.

Developers turned their back on a procurement exercise linked to projects at the Dholera Solar Park, after insisting the challenging terrain meant the electricity price ceiling stipulated by the state would make projects unviable.

Following New Delhi-based Urja Global, Singapore’s Ojovati and another Delhi company – Avanze Inventive – have signed memoranda of understanding to manufactue lithium-ion cells and batteries, respectively, in the state.