India

Mahindra Susten will retain a majority 51% stake in its Marvel Solren unit, which operates 16 MW of solar at four sites in India. It aims to jointly build up to 150 MW of capacity with the Japanese trading house by 2023.

Among 45 critical energy technologies and sectors assessed in a tracking report by the International Energy Agency, only seven are keeping hopes alive that climate, energy access and air pollution goals can be met.

With clean energy being generated at lower and lower prices around the world, solar power is playing a leading role in bringing the curtain down on coal, and will help the decarbonization of transport and space heating too.

Renewable energy investment in the Asia-Pacific region, excluding China, will overtake spending on oil and gas exploration and production by 2020, finds Norwegian consultancy Rystad Energy. And Australia is set to emerge as one of the leading investment destinations.

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.