The days of naming financing as one of the major hurdles for Indian solar appear to be coming to an end in 2017 as record low tariffs were enabled by a newly-attractive fiscal environment. PV Tech caught up with Kuljit Singh, partner, Transaction Advisory Services at EY, to discuss a potential spate of Indian solar IPOs, pension fund interest, Masala bonds and the future of the market.
SPONSORED: Falling system prices have been a key driver of PV's recent growth and competitiveness, but upfront costs are only one part of the equation for long-term profitability within the solar power industry. Maximising any given system’s cumulative power output over its lifetime is critical to lowering the levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) and maximising investment returns.
As the Trump Administration dials back the Clean Power Plan citing pesky environmental regulations for coal's problems, its claims of being against intervention ring hollow. If the President wants modern, independent and increasingly economically sustainable power infrastructure, he should be backing solar.
The Indian government caused quite the buzz last week when it announced the US$2.5 billion "Saubhagya" scheme to provide electricity access to all households by December 2018. 'Power For All' director William Brent discusses why distributed renewable energy solutions must not be overlooked.
Global solar PV manufacturing capacity expansion announcements in the first half of 2017 showed a significant increase over the second half of 2016. New plans almost reached the record heights set in the first half of 2016.
The Indian solar industry expressed shock recently when it emerged that multiple Chinese PV manufacturers had been reneging on supply contracts to India, but it seems this strategy may have been a comeuppance for historic behaviour on the part of some Indian developers.
Yesterday’s record-breaking bid opening in Saudi Arabia for 300MW of solar has grabbed headlines, including on PV Tech, but while the exact parameters of the RfP remain covert, the bid levels have sparked debate about whether such low prices can be possible without some kind of escalating tariff mechanism or other distortion.
With many of the top-20 module suppliers to the solar industry now having multi-GW shipment volumes, attention has turned firmly to assessing metrics that companies can use to benchmark the quality and reliability of shipped products against their competitors.
Chinese PV firm LONGi Solar, which is the subsidiary of LONGi Group, has become arguably the industry’s greatest advocate of monocrystalline solar. In the first installment of a two-part interview, Zhenguo Li, LONGi Group’s president, speaks with Mark Osborne about the concept of PV3.0 and where the industry is likely to head next.
With limited cell capacities in the handful of countries exempt from the US Section 201 case, where could the US realistically source compliant modules from and who are the real c-Si winners and losers. Mark Osborne and John Parnell report.
