India

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.

In response to feedback from the domestic renewable energy sector, the Indian government has revealed plans to launch $5 billion of tenders for new transmission lines, starting in phases from this summer.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has revealed plans to invest $50 million to help New Delhi-based renewables developer Avaada to quickly deploy solar throughout India.

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.

The deadline for the Solar Energy Corporation of India’s latest attempt to incentivize solar manufacturing, by offering generation capacity, has come and gone. The government body’s attempts to kick-start domestic production have thus far made little headway.

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.

Motivated by steeply declining cost curves, leading utilities are building solar portfolios around the globe. The latest statistics show the cumulative capacity of the biggest utility-scale solar plant owners topped 18 GW at the end of last year, with power companies in China, the U.S. and India to the fore.

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.

Record-setting Acme Solar has secured a third of the latest procurement exercise in the state with a lowest bid of INR2.48/kWh. The tender was oversubscribed by more than 100% as offers came in for 1,620 MW of capacity.