Best Stories

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.

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.

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.

The Power Sector has the lion´s share of 20 per cent in the industrial debt of Rs.26 trillion (lakh crore) in the country as of August 2016, followed by metals and metal products (16 per cent), roads (7 per cent) and textiles (7 per cent), and these four sectors account for about 50 per cent of the gross credit deployed in industries

After enduring two consecutive years of drought, the monsoon in India has been recorded as ´normal´ in 2016, at just 3 per cent below the long term average. The monsoon, which spans from June to September, is said to be normal when rainfall is between 96-104 per cent of the long term (50 year) average of about 88 centimetres

India´s hydro power generation capacity is mostly concentrated in the Himalayan regions, and these generating stations are fed from the glaciers. Due to this reason, the hydro power sector did not see a significant uptick at a country level as would be expected by many. At a state-level, however, many hydro-power rich states like Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala etc., have benefitted.