India

With Narendra Modi’s government stunning pollsters with another huge win, the solar industry expects renewable power momentum to be maintained with steps including anti-dumping duty on solar module imports, a national policy for rooftop solar and an emphasis on easing private-sector participation in the power sector.

While the world’s biggest solar manufacturers are confident there are plenty of alternative markets for a rising volume of panel exports, the message spelled out by first-quarter shipment figures is that protectionism works.

The contraction in Chinese trade flows to the U.S. is likely to result in the dumping in India of Far Eastern electronic and electrical components as well as steel, iron, chemicals and plastic products.

Tests by U.S.-based PV Evolution Labs (PVEL) show that monocrystalline silicon and polycrystalline silicon PV modules produced by India’s Vikram Solar met and exceeded international quality and performance benchmarks.

Solar-plus-storage could be competitive against gas peaking power plants in Australia within the next five years, as the average solar-plus-storage LCOE across the Asia-Pacific region is set to fall from $133/MWh this year to $101/MWh by 2023, according to a newly released research report.

The procurement – for PV capacity at the Dholera Solar Park – attracted bids for just 300 MW as developers shunned a tariff ceiling of $0.039/kWh.

With last year’s embarrassing manufacturing-linked capacity tender limping along, it has been reported the Indian government – whichever form it takes after the current elections – is considering another tender to incentivize the establishment of a domestic solar industry.

After two decades of growth, the amount of newly installed renewable energy capacity is no longer rising and, despite a 7% growth in electricity generation from clean energy sources, global energy-related carbon emissions have risen 1.7%.