Last Thursday, 27th August I participated as a speaker for a webinar at Shiv Nadar University. The participants were the faculty and the students. I was fortunate to have been considered for this session.
Before I started, I was walked through a presentation on the University itself. I was pretty impressed at the development and the advancements of this private multidisciplinary research university. Founded in 2011, in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, it is recognized as an ‘Institution of Eminence’ (IoE) upon recognition by the University Grants Commission.
Initially, I thought of doing something related to ‘Marketing’. There were varied and sub-topics in this field. Later, it was decided to why not do something on the current global trend and bring ‘marketing’ within it, in the form of business. Thus, the topic.
The presentation was focussed on India and the World on renewable energy as a sector. I, even added the instrumentation in my presentation so as to get a glimpse of how measurements and analysis are done on the field.
Due to the pandemic, we are confined to conduct online conversations. This is going to stay for short to mid-term. Face-to-face conversations are at a different level altogether. Nevertheless, the online video platforms have done an outstanding job in these circumstances to provide a quality experience.
Without going much into details, I’ll provide an outline.
Highlights of the webinar:
India’s Renewable Energy Target – 2022
175 GW by 2022
Classifying as under:
– 100 GW in solar power
-60 GW in wind
-15 GW in hydropower and biomass
India has achieved almost half of the target
India’s Statistics:
•5th largest energy economy
•3rd largest renewable economy
•3rd on renewable energy investment and future plans
•Growth rate 9.5% this year
•Solar target of 145 GW by 2022 (albeit the mega target was 175 GW); 275 GW by 2026-27 and 450 GW by 2029-30
•As of Dec ’19, 86 GW of on-grid renewable capacity installed
•Covid-19 disrupts India’s solar growth, installations decline to more than 1.6 GW in H1 ’20
•Q1 2020 added sheer 1080 MW
•Utility scale projects saw staggering low achievements – 886 MW, while rooftops was 194 MW
•Utility scale projects pipeline is 37 GW
•Wind capacity installation falls 70% in Q1 2020
•India commissioned 35 GW of solar capacity and 38 GW of wind capacity as of March 31, 2020
•Solar power in India has been growing at a rate of 113%, this year will be remarkably low because of understandable condition
Promising trends:
•Overall signs of improvement despite grappling with issues such as delays in funding, and uncertainty over government policies
•Signs of higher subsidies (modules & taxes relaxations)
•Renewable projects are made a priority by the Government
•MNRE clarified that ‘Must Run’ projects status remains unchanged
•Utility-scale segment will be dominated by commercial and industrial consumers •Lockdown has seen a copious amount of clerical work completed having full scope for sites to restart immediately on reopening
•India has issued an expression of interest for setting up solar PV manufacturing capacities linked with assured off-take of 20GW
•India announced bidding for 115GW renewable power projects up to March 2020
Challenges:
•Poor coordination between central and state governments on renewable energy projects
•Payment delays from state-owned discoms
•Increased financial risks from aggressive tariff caps, tariff renegotiations, and policy inconsistencies in capacity tendering processes
•Research Institutions funding allocations
•Delay in Government projects due to sanctioning and funds
•Slow expansion of transmission networks and balancing capacity
•Financial constraints for smaller renewable energy developers
Cover photo courtesy: UNESCO
