Govt advises RINL to foray into renewable energy, reduce dependence on fossil fuels
Union Minister of Power, New & Renewable Energy, Piyush Goyal has advised RINL to make a foray into solar and renewable energy to reduce dependence on fossil fuels to generate thermal power. Goyal, who is also the minister for Coal and Mines said the government will provide necessary support and incentive to industries which will come forward to set up solar power plants in the country. The minister, who was on his maiden visit to RINL-VSP, also assured full support to RINL in allocation of coal blocks. With expansion in steelmaking capacity, raw material security is one of RINL’s top most priorities. The steel major does not have access to captive iron ore mines which makes its input costs higher. It has thus been betting big on getting access to iron ore from the Kukunoor iron ore mines. Incidentally, with production capacity going up to 6.3 million tonne post expansion, RINL’s iron ore requirement is estimated to go up to around 10 million tonne per annum. Later, the minister visited major production units of the Plant including the Blast Furnace-3, Steel Melt Shop-2. He was accompanied by P Madhusudan, chairman, RINL and other senior officials including, P C Mohapatra, Director (Projects), P Raychaudhury, Director (Commercial) and K C Das, Director (Personnel). Mallex Smith Authentic Jersey
Major bureaucratic reshuffle; renewable energy secretary Rajeev Kapoor moved to petrochem department
n a major bureaucratic reshuffle effected today, as many as 17 bureaucrats were assigned new secretary-level portfolios at various ministries. New and Renewable Power secretary Rajeev Kapoor has been moved to Department of Chemicals and Petrochemicals as secretary and has been replaced by Anand Kumar, Managing Director, National Highways Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited. Ajay Kumar Bhalla, Director General Foreign Trade has been appointed as secretary, Ministry of Power as the current secretary PK Pujari will retire at the end of this month. Ajay Prakash Sawhney, additional secretary in the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas has been appointed as Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. He is replacing Aruna Sundararajan who has been given the charge of secretary, Department of Telecommunications. Rajeev Gauba will replace Rajiv Mehrishi as Home Secretary from September 1 when the latter retires. Gauba will be replaced by Durga Shankar Mishra as Secretary of Ministry of Urban Development. NK Sinha, Secretary in Ministry of Culture, has been made secretary in Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. He will replace Ajay Mittal who has been given charge of Secretary, Department of Personnel and Training. Ravi Kant, additional secretary, Department of Defence has been made secretary in Ministry of Shipping while Subhash C Garg, Executive Director, World Bank, has been given charge of Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs. Yudhvir Singh Mallik, Chairman, National Highways Authority of India, will now be the Secretary in Road Transport and Highways Ministry. He will be replaced by Deepak Kumar who is currently the director general of Employees State Insurance Corporation. Arun Kumar Panda, Additional Secretary, Department of Health and Family Welfare, will now be the secretary in Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises while Avinash K Srivastarva will replace Jagdish Prasad Meena as Secretary, Ministry of Food Processing Industries. Mario Addison Womens Jersey
845 Megawatt capacity solar power plants installed across India: NTPC
The National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) of India has recently revealed that India now hosts solar power capacity worth 845 MW, after the recent addition of the 225 MW Mandsaur Solar Power Project- a 250 MW solar farm located in Madhya Pradesh. The remaining 25 MW will be commissioned as soon as evacuation constraints pertaining to the solar park developer Rewa Ultra Mega Solar Limited are eradicated; PV Magazine quoted the Mercom Capital Group, as reporting. Apart from this, Vikram Solar, BHEL and Tata Power also have 50 MW plants currently operating on the site. Solar power is being increasingly promoted as an alternative source of energy, the latest one being the installation of solar panels on the rooftop of all Kochi Metro Rail stations. Apart from this, the Delhi Metro is also enabled with solar PV, and is set to further expand the capacity. Mumbai is also considering the creation of a rooftop solar network to be incorporated with the Central Railways. Korbinian Holzer Jersey
Ahead of Modi visit, US announces $7.5 million to advance India’s power grid
Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US, the Trump administration said today it will spend $7.5 million to help advance India’s power grid, as part of the two countries’ commitments to ensuring access to affordable and reliable energy. The Ministry of Science and Technology and industry will match the commitment of US’ Department of Energy, bringing the total commitment to $30 million, officials here said. “This new consortium demonstrates the US and Indian commitments to ensuring access to affordable and reliable energy in both countries,” Energy Secretary Rick Perry said. “We know that continued grid innovation will promote economic growth and energy security in the United States and India,” he said. The initiative, part of America’s commitment to fostering the reliable, resilient and secure delivery of electricity, was needed for the strong US national security, economic growth and global leadership, as well as furthering Department of Energy (DOE)’s collaboration with India under the US-India Partnership to Advance Clean Energy (PACE), officials said. The US-India collaboration for smart distribution system with storage (UI-ASSIST) was selected as the new consortia for Smart Grid and Energy Storage under the US-India Joint Clean Energy Research and Development Center (JCERDC), the DOE said in a statement. To help pave the way to a more advanced distribution grid that will allow greater use of distributed energy resources such as microgrids and energy storage, the new consortia will bring together experts from academia, DOE’s national laboratories and industry, it said. Together with their counterparts in India, the center will conduct research and deploy new smart grid and energy storage technologies that will modernise the grids of both the nations to make them “smarter”, while increasing resilience and reliability, the DOE said. Through JCERDC, the US’ world class installations and national laboratories will contribute their expertise and capabilities as India expands energy access to its remote areas, improves its grid reliability and resilience, and strengthens its energy security. The US participants will gain insight from India’s grid modernisation efforts – a potential export market for US equipment worth billions of dollars – and promote researcher access to India’s grid operational experience, it said. UI-ASSIST’s US team, led by Washington State University, is comprised of MIT, Texas A&M University, University of Hawaii, Idaho National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Snohomish County (WA) Public Utility District, Avista, Burns and McDonnell, ETAP Operation Technology, ALSTOM Grid/GE Grid Solutions, Clean Energy Storage, ABB, Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation, and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA). The Indian team, led by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, includes partners from IIIT Delhi, IIT Madras, IIT Roorkee, IIT Bhubaneshwar and The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) New Delhi. Vernon Hargreaves III Womens Jersey
Will Modi keep his Paris pledge or dump it like Trump did? These 3 factors will decide:View
As soon as Donald Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement on climate change, eyes turned eastward. Even as the US reneges on its promises, the argument now goes, China and India will show leadership instead; they at least are committed to low-carbon growth. I wouldn’t be so sure, at least where India is concerned. It is true that the Indian government has reiterated its Paris pledges. But Trump’s decision has nevertheless opened a door for India to revise its own very stringent commitments as and when they become problematic. While they haven’t yet reached that point, they may well do so, and soon. The positive story about India and climate change rests on the idea that, although the country remains heavily dependent on coal-based power plants, it may add to its stock of such plants much more slowly than was earlier anticipated. In fact, given that coal plants that will produce more than 50,000 megawatts of electricity are already being constructed, the government’s most recent energy plan estimates that no additional coal-burning capacity will be needed between now and 2027. Questions are rightly being raised about whether it’s profitable any longer to invest in new coal plants in India. But here’s the problem. All such studies make a couple of very big assumptions about the future — assumptions which, given Indian history, are dangerous. Here’s the first assumption: that India will meet its targets for generating renewable power. The government wants to build 100 gigawatts of solar capacity by 2022. At best, this year, it will install around 10 gigawatts — and this has been a very good year. In fact, so many companies have been bidding furiously for solar power plants recently that auctions have produced unsustainably low per-unit prices for renewable energy. What happens if the bubble bursts over the next few years, and some of these companies start going bankrupt? Won’t investors be turned off then? And, if so, where will the remaining thousands of megawatts of solar power capacity come from? The second worrying assumption is that new coal power plants won’t produce electricity at a lower cost than new renewable energy projects. To ensure that happens, the government would have to enforce onerous environmental regulations and, of course, plant owners would have to believe they can’t quietly ignore those regulations once their facilities are up and running. This is, effectively, circular reasoning. One can’t assume that India will meet its Paris targets because of the price of coal, since ensuring that coal will be expensive assumes that India’s government is committed to its Paris targets! And, finally, there’s a third, even more problematic assumption underlying the headlines about India turning away from coal: that India’s economy is a monolith. In fact, even if the central government wants to promote green energy, even if, overall, new coal projects might not make sense, individual new coal projects might. Perhaps only a few such projects can be profitable. But many companies and investors, especially those that have political connections, are sure to be convinced that their project will somehow wind up being the profitable one, if they can only get the right concessions from one or another government authority. In other words, zero new coal capacity might be needed till 2027. But there’s no reason to feel confident that zero new coal capacity will be added. India isn’t like China, or the US, or Australia or Germany when it comes to meeting its Paris pledges. In India, hundreds of millions of people still live without electricity — a big part of what keeps them desperately poor. India also has a shrunken manufacturing sector, partly because electricity is so expensive (relatively) and its supply so variable. No democratically accountable Indian government can ever favor an international agreement over fixing these two problems. Remember this: Coal looks bad in India at the moment because its economy is struggling and because it is so services-intensive. Over the past few years, coal plants have used less and less of their capacity as growth has slowed. In other words, nobody in India has had to make a real choice between growing manufacturing and sticking to the country’s climate commitments. But, if India’s economy does take off, Prime Minister Narendra Modi might indeed be faced with such a choice. Modi — who as a chief minister decried climate deals as infringing on Indian sovereignty — has already gone out on a limb and reversed decades of Indian climate policy in signing the Paris agreement. If he’s ever actually confronted with that choice — one that’s much more real than the one Donald Trump faced — I wouldn’t be as sure as all the headline-writers that he won’t follow Trump’s lead. Cameron Jordan Jersey
Private power transmission cos seek more projects via competitive bids
Private power transmission companies have written to the government seeking greater participation in project execution via tariff based competitive bidding route (TBCB) and have said most projects still are awarded through nomination basis. In separate letters written to the Ministry of Power by the Electric Power Transmission Association (EPTA) and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), it has been said that still most projects are awarded on nomination basis which is hurting the private sector. FICCI, in the letter addressed to power secretary PK Pujari, said that that private sector participation in the transmission sector will be key to the growth of this infrastructure segment and added that while generation has increased at 11 per cent over last six years, transmission has grown at only 6 per cent. Since 2009, only 50 transmission projects have been awarded via TBCB route. The industry body further said as of now, around 6.7 per cent of power transmission network in the country is operated by private players while in generation private sector contributes for around 44 per cent capacity. Both the letters have also urged for regular meetings of both empowered and standing committees that decide the awarding of these transmission projects. “Lately, we have seen very infrequent EC meetings and number of projects being cleared for implementation through TBCB route are also limited… This essentially reduces the availability of projects for private sector besides discouraging growth in transmission sector,” FICCI said. It said in the 36th meeting of the Empowered Committee last year, nine projects were awarded each via TBCB and nomination basis while a year before that, 23 of 29 projects were given on nomination. EPTA has also stressed on inclusion on transmission licensees in regional power committees as per norms laid down by the ministry of power. It said that inputs from transmission licensees would “certainly add value to the decision making for planning future projects”. According to (EPTA), since April 2011, around 50 transmission projects have been awarded through TBCB route with an approximate investment of Rs 64,000 crore, which is around 19 per cent of the total investment made in the transmission sector during that time. As per a power sector expert, while a lot of investments were promised in the sector by the government, not many projects have come up so far. In 2015-16, power minister Piyush Goyal had said that investments to the tune of Rs 1 lakh crore was expected in the power transmission sector. But as per report, only 13 projects with around Rs 18,000 crore worth were awarded through the TBCB route, of which Power Grid won four. Separately, the company later said, it has commissioned Rs 30,000 crore worth projects in 2015-16. Last year, the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission had issued a statutory advice to the ministry to facilitate development of transmission capacity manner under TBCB route. Akeem Spence Authentic Jersey
India’s power plants stranded as 50 million homes left in the dark
India is scaling back expectations for power demand growth as it struggles to electrify millions of homes despite a glut in generation capacity. The world’s second-most populous nation is building more power plants than it can utilize as state-level distributors struggle to connect 50 million households, according to Ravindra Kumar Verma, head of the Central Electricity Authority, the power ministry’s planning arm. As a result, about 25 gigawatts of coal-fired power-generating capacity is “stranded” and unused, he said. That’s equivalent to the entire installed capacity of neighbouring Pakistan. Demand growth for power is slowing as state distribution companies, known as discoms, struggle to purchase enough electricity for the populations they serve. Most discoms lose money selling below cost to poor and agricultural customers and through power theft. The CEA defines demand as the amount of electricity that distributors buy, not necessarily how much would be needed for the whole country, helping explain why millions still lack power and several cities face regular blackouts despite the under-utilized capacity. “We were thinking that the entire demand will come on the system, but it has not happened that way,” Verma said in an interview in New Delhi on Tuesday. “When discoms turn around is the point when we will get close to 24/7 power. That’s where all the constraint lies.” Electricity use is estimated to grow 6.2 per cent a year over the six years ending March 2022. Consumption over the previous six years expanded 5.3 per cent, missing a 7.6 per cent forecast, the CEA said in its latest power survey report published this year. The lower-than-expected growth rate led the agency to temper its outlook, Verma said. “Projections are estimated growth rates worked out on the basis of certain assumptions. If the assumptions slip, then projections are hit,” he said. India is on track to add 102 gigawatts of conventional power projects in the five years ended March 2017, compared with a target of 88.5 gigawatts, according to country’s Draft Electricity Plan published in December. At the same time, the country’s gas-fired plants, which can generate nearly 25 gigawatts of power, are running at less than a quarter of their capacity, according to the plan. The country’s capacity totaled 329 gigawatts, with more than half of that coming from coal-fired plants, according to CEA data. David Desharnais Jersey
As solar energy booms, Indian manufacturers struggle to compete with China
Some of India’s biggest solar equipment makers are facing financial collapse, priced out by Chinese competitors as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government prioritises cheap power over local manufacturing despite his ‘Make in India’ push. Though President Donald Trump is pulling the United States out of the Paris accord on climate change, India is sticking to its huge renewable energy programme. That has created a multi-billion-dollar market for Chinese solar product makers, who are facing an overcapacity at home and steep duties in Europe. India’s solar power generation capacity has already more than tripled in three years to over 12 gigawatts (GW) as Modi targets raising energy generation from all renewable sources to 175 GW by 2022. Chinese companies have gained the most from that increase, accounting for around 85 percent of India’s solar module demand and earning around $2 billion, according to industry data. The total annual market could jump to more than $10 billion in the next few years going by the government’s capacity targets. Local companies such as Jupiter Solar, Indosolar Ltd and Moser Baer India Ltd, however, are struggling to win contracts. Orders funnelled through a domestic-content policy have all but dried up after the World Trade Organization last September upheld an earlier ruling that found the move violated global trade norms. As a result, Jupiter said it could shut shop by July after delivering their last orders this month; Indosolar auditors have raised doubts over it remaining as a “going concern”; and Moser Baer says it needs support from its lenders to revive its solar business. “Torprdoed” Indian solar power plant developers — including companies backed by Japan’s Softbank and Goldman Sachs are quoting ever-lower tariffs in auctions to win big projects, encouraged by the steep drop in Chinese solar equipment prices. That is squeezing out Indian cell and module makers, many of which have inferior technology, depend on imports of raw materials, have limited access to cheap loans and operate below capacity. Chinese modules are 10-20 percent cheaper than those made in India, company and industry executives said. “The WTO ruling has torpedoed everything. It’s not a case of one company – we have the largest cell operating capacity – everybody below us will shut down one after another,” Jupiter CEO Dhruv Sharma told Reuters by phone. Chinese companies were selling solar cells in India at 19-20 US cents, around 35 percent below his production cost, he added. There are more than 110 Indian solar cell and module makers registered with the government, out of which consultancy Bridge to India expects only a handful to survive. Santosh Vaidya, a senior official in the Ministry of New & Renewable Energy, said the government was working on several initiatives to promote the domestic solar manufacturing industry. He did not elaborate. Going The Telecom Way India’s promise, and need, as a market for solar, is obvious. It is one of the lowest per-capita consumers of electricity in the world and more than 200 million of its people are still not connected to the grid, making it crucial for the government to aggressively push for cheap power. Despite its low labour costs, it is not alone in buckling under pressure from Chinese competition. Earlier this month, Germany’s SolarWorld, once Europe’s largest solar panel maker, said it would file for insolvency. Indian companies produced an estimated 1.33 GW of modules last year out of the total capacity of 5.29 GW, according to Bridge to India. Total consumption of modules – 60 percent of a solar project’s cost – was around 4 GW. Solar project developer SB Energy, a joint venture between SoftBank, Taiwan’s Foxconn and India’s Bharti Enterprises, said it had discussed the shortage of local manufacturing with the government. “Lack of significant domestic solar manufacturing capacity is a concern, as this is a major gap,” SB Energy Executive Chairman Manoj Kohli said, drawing a parallel with India’s huge mobile phone market but negligible local production. Several company executives said a lack of scale, absence of raw material supply chains and rapidly changing technology were some of other reasons Indian firms were unable to compete with Chinese manufacturers such as Trina Solar and Yingli. “The government is busy bringing power prices down … but you can’t build castles on graves,” Gyanesh Chaudhary, CEO of module maker Vikram Solar told Reuters. “Without a domestic manufacturing ecosystem, no public policy can last for a long time.” Paulo Orlando Jersey
‘Renewables least cost option in India, Denmark, Egypt’
Renewables are becoming the least cost option in India, Denmark, Egypt, Mexico, Peru and the United Arab Emirates, a global multi-stakeholder renewable energy policy network said on Wednesday. It said record power capacity of 161 gigawatts (GW) added globally and that these countries saw renewable electricity being delivered at $0.05 per kilowatt-hour or less. The renewable cost is well below equivalent costs for fossil fuel and nuclear generating capacity in each of these countries, said REN21, the global renewable energy policy multi-stakeholder network located at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Paris. It released its Renewables 2017 Global Status Report, the most comprehensive annual overview of the state of renewable energy. Global additions in installed renewable power capacity set new records last year, with 161 GW installed, increasing total global capacity by almost nine per cent over the previous year, to nearly 2,017 GW. Solar PV accounted for around 47 per cent of the capacity added in 2016, followed by wind power at 34 per cent and hydropower at 15.5 per cent. Officials told IANS that solar prices in India hit a record low twice last month. India finalised a new auction at the Bhadla solar park in Rajasthan on May 10 with the award of a power tariff at a record low Rs 2.62/kWh ($0.040/kWh), 12 per cent below the previous record low Rewa solar tariff awarded only just three months ago in Madhya Pradesh. This new record only lasted two days with the latest 500MW solar auction coming in at Rs 2.44/kWh ($0.038/kWh), down yet another seven per cent. This tender was also for projects at the Bhadla Phase IV solar park. The REN21 report said Denmark and Germany last year successfully managed peaks of renewables electricity of 140 per cent and 86.3 per cent, respectively. Global energy-related CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industry remained stable for a third year in a row despite a three percent growth in the global economy and an increased demand for energy. This can be attributed primarily to the decline of coal, but also to the growth in renewable energy capacity and to improvements in energy efficiency. But the report forewarns that the energy transition is not happening fast enough to achieve the goals of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement that aims to limit average global warming to 2 degrees Celsius by cutting greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels. The report says investments in renewable energy installations are down. Although global investment in new renewable power and fuel capacity was roughly double that in fossil fuels, investments in new renewable energy installations were down 23 per cent compared to 2015. Among developing and emerging market countries, renewable energy investment fell 30 per cent, to $116.6 billion, while that of developed countries fell 14 per cent to $125 billion. Investment continues to be heavily focused on wind and solar PV, however all renewable energy technologies need to be deployed in order to keep global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius, said the report. Globally, subsidies for fossil fuels and nuclear power continue to dramatically exceed those for renewable technologies, it added. Craig Stammen Womens Jersey
U.S. solar market to fall 16 percent in 2017, report says
U.S. solar installations will fall 16 percent this year, according to a forecast released on Thursday, as utilities slow procurement of projects to meet state mandates and residential systems become harder to sell. Following a banner 2016 driven by expectations that a key federal tax credit would expire at the end of that year, the utility-scale market is expected to drop to 8 gigawatts this year from more than 10 GW last year, according to a report by GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association. The utility market, which accounts for about half of all solar systems, is expected to resume growth in 2019 as utilities seek to procure projects before the 30 percent federal tax credit for solar projects begins to step down in 2020. Prices on solar systems dropped further during the first quarter, falling below $1 per watt for the first time, the report said. Residential solar is expected to rise 2 percent for the year, well below the 19 percent growth it logged last year. California is experiencing a major decline in adoption of home installations that contributed to a 17 percent first-quarter drop in the nationwide market. The state accounted for 35 percent of the total U.S. market during the quarter, its lowest share since GTM began tracking the market in 2010. Large national installers that make up close to half the market, like Tesla Inc’s SolarCity and Vivint Solar Inc , have slowed growth to focus on profitability. Residential markets in New York, Massachusetts and Maryland also fell during the quarter as installers found it was taking longer to win over customers beyond the early adopters. The market for non-residential solar, which includes commercial and community solar installations, rose 30 percent in the first quarter thanks in part to a robust community solar market in Minnesota and growth in New York. GTM would revise its forecasts downward, it warned, if a petition by bankrupt solar manufacturer Suniva to implement a 78-cents-per-watt floor on solar module pricing is approved by the U.S. International Trade Commission. U.S. module prices were around 40 cents a watt in the first quarter. Suniva filed a rare Section 201 petition with the ITC last month, seeking new duties on imported solar products to combat a global oversupply of panels that has depressed prices. If successful, the petition would put solar system costs at 2015 levels, according to GTM. New England Patriots Authentic Jersey