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Just think of power going off while an important surgery is taking place in a hospital and it will not get back for a day or two. The kind of disruption an electricity blackout arising from grid collapse can cause is enormous for different people at various places. Grid collapse is the worst-case scenario for any transmission utility too.

India has a very promising solar resource, with tropical and sub-tropical regions. The DNI map of India depicts that several states in India are suitable for solar thermal projects.

With India eyeing such ambitious targets to magnify its solar capacity to 100 GW by FY 2022, the growth in the sector has been promising, but requires more impetus. On the policy front, although all the states have come up with dedicated solar policies with well-defined targets, there is barely any focus on CSP.

The Union Budget is full of sops for solar - in terms of investment, village electrification and taxes. But, it calls for building renewable power compatible T&D infrastructure on a war footing.

Power infrastructure in India had really improved at least by 5- 6 % on an yearly basis, and the installed capacity had peaked up to 320 GW, by now. There has been a tremendous shift in renewable power as the same constitutes of 29% of the total installed capacity, mostly coming from wind and solar.

Capacity addition in Renewable Energy (RE) has shown a steady progress in the past decade. Though wind energy is leading the RE basket, solar, biomass and small hydro have made significant progress in the last few years.

Green Energy Corridor planned to carry ´intermittent´ solar and wind power from producers to consumers efficiently, is yet to catch up with the pace of capacity creation.

Renewable energy certificate (REC) mechanism, a market-based instrument introduced in 2010 to promote renewable energy and facilitate compliance of renewable purchase obligations (RPOs), has not received an enthusiastic response from the obligatory entities till recently.

Success of the RPO policy primarily depends on ensuring that obligated entities comply with this mechanism. This can be enforced through stricter compliance regulations and penalties for non-obligating entities. Possibly, if non-compliant entities can be mandated to purchase REC´s corresponding to their obligation for a calculated period of around 6 months - 1 year in the past, this may support clearing out of the current pending REC´s that are lying unredeemed.