India Aims to Speed Up Activity Toward Renewable Energy Installation Goal

Faced with the prospect of perhaps not being able to meet the target of installing 175 GW of renewable energy by 2022, the Indian government has decided to adopt a new tack.
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Media reports in India say the government is mulling a tender calling for the manufacturing of solar power equipment that doesn’t come with the usual clause requiring electricity generation. The aim is to invoke investor interest and meet the demands of this market.
There’s little doubt in anyone’s mind that to meet the 2022 target, things need to, well, be speeded up.
Of the 175 GW of renewable energy capacity, 100 GW will be from solar, the Business Standard reported. Of this, the government expects at least 40 GW to come from installation of rooftop solar projects.
While the interest in solar power as an alternate has been growing in India, interest from solar equipment makers has been poor, which is now coming in the way of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitious plans on this front.
According to a report by news agency Bloomberg, India has been “struggling” to push its budding domestic solar equipment manufacturing industry. By one government reckoning, as of now, it can meet about 15% of India’s annual needs; India has already imposed a safeguard duty on cheap Chinese import options.
The same Bloomberg report pointed out that a May 2018 tender was “downsized” and also delayed many times before being scrapped due to poor investor interest. It was replaced by a smaller version in January, for which the bidding deadline has been extended three times — more likely than not, the latest deadline of May 14 will be extended again.
But in a case of the opposite, at least one province in India has decided to halt all new solar projects.
A few weeks ago, the southern Indian state of Karnataka has halted the construction of new solar energy projects, Livemint reported. The Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission, a regulatory body, stated there would be no further bidding to procure solar energy from large-scale projects until further orders.
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The Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission wrote to the state electricity body that because of Karnataka’s power-positive situation, it would have to restrict procurement from high-cost sources. The state’s distribution companies have already contracted to procure adequate power from solar energy sources, enabling them to meet their renewable purchase obligations (RPOs), not just for Fiscal Year 2020, but for another couple of years, as well.