Bidding in the Indian solar industry has been deemed irrationally aggressive by 70% of CEOs responding to a survey from consultancy firm Bridge to India, however, sentiment remains upbeat about growth prospects and the overall industry.
UPDATED: India’s Ministry of New & Renewable Energy has released its ‘National Wind-Solar Hybrid Policy’ seeking to encourage hybridisation of projects due to the benefits they offer for grid integration.
Every village in India now has some form of access to electricity whether it be through an on or off-grid solution, according to prime minister Narendra Modi, however, there are still millions of households across India, both urban and rural, without access to electricity.
Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company (MSEDCL) has issued a tender for 1GW of solar capacity separated into smaller projects of 2-10MW in size, to be spread across 218 talukas throughout the state.
China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) has called on local governments to ease burdens on the renewable energy sector with a range of measures including the “strict implementation”of a guarantee for signing power purchase agreements (PPAs).
New Jersey is the latest US state to set itself targets for the deployment of energy storage, with newly passed legislation calling for 600MW of the technology within three years.
French power giant Total has signed an agreement with the controlling shareholders of another France-based power firm Direct Energie to acquire a 74.33% stake in the company for roughly €1.4 billion.
Edify Energy and Wirsol Energy have connected the 60MW Gannawarra Solar Farm in northwest Victoria to the grid, with a storage retrofit expected before the summer.
UPDATE: Major Indian solar EPC firm Mahindra Susten has put in the lowest bid for a solar and energy storage tender in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands for the second time, having seen its victory in the original auction torn away by authorities as they explored other sources of power generation.
PV inverter manufacturer Sungrow and energy storage system integrator / software specialist Greensmith are working on the first community solar-plus-storage project to be delivered in the US state of Massachusetts.
Regulations released earlier this year halted the market for low voltage solar systems connected to the grid, but the larger consumer and the off-grid segments continue to show promise.
Lebanon could reconfigure its laws and regulations to allow private sector actors to generate renewable energy for sale to the grid, it emerged as the Middle Eastern country opened up its first solar-plus-storage tender process.
The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) is seeking expressions of interest (EOI) for projects to trial short-term forecasting from large-scale wind and solar farms across Australia.
Cypress Creek Renewables, which developed 1GW of PV projects in an 18-month stretch up to the beginning of this year, has used Lockheed Martin’s lithium-ion battery storage solutions in a dozen just-completed solar-plus-storage projects.
Indian power minister R.K. Singh has chaired a meeting with battery-based energy storage manufacturers calling on them to set up manufacturing units in India.
