Asia & Oceania

Philippine Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Alfonso G. Cusi has expressed intentions for the Filipino government to accelerate the deployment of mini-grids using renewable energy in the country to help achieve its goal of total electrification by 2022.

Solar developer Fotowatio Renewable Ventures (FRV) has closed financing for the 100MW(AC) Lilyvale Solar Farm, Located near Emerald in Queensland.

Foresight Group, an independent infrastructure and private equity manager, has acquired the 110MW Bannerton Solar Project in Victoria, Australia on behalf of Foresight Solar Fund Limited (FSFL), KDB Infrastructure Investments Asset Management and Hanwha Energy.

India’s largest utility NTPC has tendered 225MW of solar using local content rules at Billhaur in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has enlarged its support of clean energy transmission projects in India by obtaining co-financing from multilateral development bank Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

IPP Azure Power announced that it has won an additional 20MW of rooftop PV projects for Indian Railway — the largest rail network in Asia.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will provide a US$50 million loan to help fund around 50MW of rooftop solar projects in Sri Lanka.

Tamil Nadu’s distribution company (Discom) awarded 1.5GW of solar to 18 companies in June, but it has now signed PPAs with just 16 of the companies, all of whom have agreed to lower their original tariff to the lowest bid in the auction.

Distributed solar firm Fourth Partner Energy is to build roughly 10MW of rooftop solar PV projects for Indian Railways at Varanasi, Jabalpur and Gorakhpur.

The Mareeba Shire Council has officially given its approval for a 60MW PV project set to be developed in northern Australia.