The Leading Solar Magazine In India · 2018-09-13 · Roof-Top Solar Plant in Guwahati... BlackRock...

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VOLUME 10Issue # 9

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FEATUREDTechno-Economic Analysis of Stand-alone Solar PV and Battery based Micro-grids in Karnataka

What Financiers Need to Unlock $1 Trillion in Renewable Energy Investment

BlackRock plans its largestever alternative investment

GreenBrilliance USA annou nces PV manufacturing in the United States

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HEAD-SALES & MARKETING :GOURAV [email protected]

Green Climate Fund meeting ‘disappointing’, chief quits

BUSINESS & FINANCE BUSINESS & FINANCE

Renewable Energy Certificates to Continue Face Regulatory Chal-lenges: Ind-Ra

RESEARCH & ANALYSISBUSINESS & FINANCE

FEATURED

7 EQ September -Part B 2018www.EQMagPro.com

Growatt smart new inverter solutions impress visitors at Intersolar 2018

Azure Power Wins 160 MW Solar Power Project with the Highest

State of the Art Factory Open-ing by Sungrow for India Base

Vadodara airport to switch tosolar power soon...

ISRO Develops Technology To Mass Produce Solar Cells In...

HFM Solar commissions 330 kWp Roof-Top Solar Plant in Guwahati...

BlackRock plans its largestever alternative investment

Vice PresidentSales team-technik group, Germany

WITH MR. SVEN KRAMER

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PRODUCTS

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TECHNOLOGY

SOLAR PROJECTS PV MANUFACTURINGSOLAR PROJECTS

TECHNOLOGY SOLAR PROJECTS

INTERVIEW

$250 Million World Bank Loan to Support Electricity Distribution Sector Reforms in Rajasthan,

Gujarat HC notice to govt on allot-ment of village land for windmill projects

Centre asks states to use allocated funds for electri-fication of all...

INDIA RESEARCH & ANALYSIS INDIA

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INDIA

On this occasion, Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Jairam Thakur sought 35 years long-term finance and speedy forest clearance for hydro power plants so that this renewable source of energy can be harnessed.

“We are giving funds. But those allocated funds are not being used. We are not able to use money. If we don’t use that (funds), we would not be able to reach any home (or electrify them),” Singh said.

e was addressing a confer-ence of power and renewable energy ministers of states & UTs here. He underlined how Rs 42,000 crore was sanctioned under Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY), but just Rs 9,000 crore has been spent by states and UTs. Moreover, under Integrated Power Development Scheme (IPDS), a total of Rs 75,000 crore was sanctioned. About the household electrification scheme Saubhagya, he said: “We have larger target ahead of us. How can we remove poverty without providing energy access to all. We will provide electricity to all households by December 31, 2018 and not by March 31, 2019 as envisaged earlier in the scheme.”

Regarding coal, Singh said the dry fuel will continue to be an issue for 2-3 years until the new mines open up because country’s power demand and electricity reach is increasing which indicates good GDP or economic growth. The minister also cited increase in per capita consumption with rising prosperity as one of reasons for rising power demand and coal shortage. He said the centre has asked all states to import coal for meeting their demands and also take steps to augment supply to power plants by improving trans-port infrastructure like rail sidings. The minister also talked about liberalising power supplies by generation firms. He said:”Power generation companies should be allowed to supply power from

more efficient plants as tariff is low there. This will not require any change in the power purchase agreements. This will help bring down the cost of power.”

On the unscheduled load shed-ding or power cuts, he said:”If there is load shedding we would impose penalty (from April 1, 2019). All of us have agreed on this earlier. Besides, if we don’t plug in losses, reduce cross subsidy and transfer subsidy by direct benefit transfer, we cannot improve the financial health of discoms.”

“Crores of people are deprived of electricity in the country. No country can be developed if there is load shedding and people live without electricity. It is a chal-lenge,” he added.

Centre asks states to use allo-Cated funds for eleCtrifiCation of all households by deCemberUnion Power Minister R K Singh asked all states to use allocated funds under various schemes, including IPDS and DDUGJY, to achieve the electrification target for all households by year-end.

Under Saubhagya scheme, the government wants to energise over 40 million unelectrified households in the country. The Rs 16,320 crore scheme was launched in September last by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. At pres-ent, over 7 million families have been provided electricity under the scheme.

Talking to reporters, Delhi Power Minster Satyendra Jain said Delhi’s Dadri, Badarpur and Jhajjar power plants are still reeling under coal shortage. He cautioned that unless coal supplies are improved, blackouts will continue in Delhi. Asked about power minis-try’s initiative on ramping up coal supplies, Jain said:”Whenever I raise this issue, coal is supplied to power plants but again the situ-ation comes to square one. They have to en-sure at least 15 days of coal stocks at power plants which is a norm. “The Centre is follow-ing our foot steps as far as imposing penalty for unscheduled power cuts is concerned. We started this. We will soon implement this.”

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INDIA

eesl signs mous with disComs to install 10 lakh smart meters in haryana

Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL), under Ministry of Power, Government of India, signed two MoUs (Memorandums of Understand-ing) with UHBVN (Uttar Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam) and DHBVN (Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam) to install 10 Lakh Smart Meters in Haryana.

Memorandums of Understanding signed with DHBVN (Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam) and UHBVN (Uttar Haryana Bijli Vit-ran Nigam) to deploy smart meters in Gurugram, Faridabad, Hisar, Karnal, Panipat and Panchkula.Smart meters will enable consumer convenience and ensure im-proved service delivery.

he MoUs entail supply and installation of Smart Meters in Gurugram, Faridabad, Hisar, Karnal, Panipat and Panchkula within 3 years in a phased manner. Haryana Chief Minister Shri Manohar Lal Khattar has recently accorded ap-proval for installation of 10 lakh smart power meters in five districts of the state.The MoU with EESL was signed

by Shri S.K. Bansal, Director/Operations from DHBVN and Shri Naresh Sardana, Director/T1 from UHBVN. EESL was represented by Shri Raj Kumar Luthra, General Manager, Smart Meters National Programme.

As per the MoU, the implementation of Smart Metering (AMI) solution will enable significant billing efficiencies for both the DISCOMs. EESL will fund, build, operate and manage the Smart Metering (AMI) Solution implementa-tion in the project area for a defined project period and will monetize its investment on per month annuity basis. As part of the project, EESL will initially install meters for 10 lakh customers in select cities under the DISCOMs’ jurisdiction in Haryana, scaling the project to more towns in subse-quent years. EESL will engage a System Integrator (SI) to implement the Smart Metering (AMI) Solution.

Smart meters will enable consumers to monitor their con-sumption pattern and the corresponding cost, leading them to adapt their energy use and reduce power wastage, providing long-term carbon and financial savings. With better complaint management, the state’s grid will also achieve faster restora-tion from outages while delivering improvements in system stability, reliability and transparency and scalable solutions that deliver the benefits of energy efficiency to all.” The objective of EESL’s Smart Meter National Programme (SMNP) is to replace 25 crores conventional meters with smart meters. The Smart Meters programme is also an unprecedented step towards delivering digital literacy and services under the Digital India pro-gramme of the Government of India. This programme will play an important role in empowering citizens by bringing in transpar-ency and accountability in electricity consumption and billing.

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Shri Saurabh Kumar, Managing Director, EESL said, “We are honored to be a partner in Hary-ana’s journey towards adoption of measures that will pave the way for initiating smart measures by DISCOMs in the state.

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INDIA

$250 million world bank loan to support eleCtriCity distribution seCtor reforms in rajasthan, indiaThe World Bank Board approved a $250 million development policy loan (DPL) to support the government of Rajasthan in improving the perfor-mance of its electricity distribution sector under the state’s 24×7 Power for All program.

he Second Programmatic Electricity Distribution Reform Development Policy Loan for Rajasthan is the second in the series of two operations planned for a comprehensive turnaround of Rajasthan’s electricity distribution sector. The first loan closed in March 2017. The DISCOMs in Rajasthan provide electricity to about 9.5 million customers. However, a combination of high generation costs, inefficiencies in the distribution sector and an accumula-tion of long-delayed tariff adjustments has resulted in several years of continuing losses for the DISCOMs leading to a total outstanding debt of Rs 780 billion as on July 2015.

In its second phase the operation will deepen the institutional and operational reforms that were launched in late 2015 centered around the Government of India’s (GoIs) Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojna (UDAY), which Rajasthan joined in 2016 and the Rajasthan State Electricity Distribution Management Responsibility (RSEDMR) Act, which aims to reform the governance of DISCOMs and bring greater public accountability in their functioning. The program will improve the credit worthi-ness of DISCOMs to support the govern-ment’s goal of providing electricity access to all households, improve service delivery, and enable private investment of renew-able energy.

Measures such as financial restructuring, regular energy audits, unified billing system, increased usage of IT systems and effective employee and customer engagement are helping DISCOMs improve their operational and financial performance. The different initiatives have started showing results and the combined financial loss of the DISCOMs has reduced from Rs 156 billion in FY[1] 2014 to Rs 48.2 billion in FY 17 and is expected to further go down to around Rs 28 billion (estimated) in FY 18. The aggregate technical and commercial (AT&C) losses of the DISCOMs have declined from 29.5 percent in FY 15 to 23.8 percent in FY 17 and are expected to further go down to 20 percent (estimated) in FY 18. To address concerns of affordability and access to electricity for the poor, the program also supports GoI’s Domestic Efficient Lighting Program (DELP), under which more than 15 million LED lamps have been distributed in the state.

The key areas that the program will support include:

strengthening governance in the distribution sector in the state by establishing annual performance MoUs between the DISCOMs and the state government; putting in place a performance management system; providing incentives to employees for improving performance; financial restructuring and recovery in the sector by transferring considerable amounts of the DISCOMs debt to the state; bringing in more discipline in the revenue requirements of DISCOMs; taking initiatives in reducing the costs of energy procurement; and improving the operational performance of the DISCOMs through initiatives like publishing feeder level energy audits, increased usage of IT etc. The loan, from the International Bank for Reconstruction

and Development (IBRD), has a 3-year grace period, and a maturity of 21 years.

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“The electricity distribution sector in Rajas-than has taken number of initiatives over the last few years that have helped in improving the operational and financial health of the DISCOMs. It is important that the DISCOMs continue to focus on improving operational efficiency, consumer engagement and trans-parency in the sector among other initiatives to continue the positive trend in performance and steer the electricity distribution sector on a path to sustainable recovery,” said Rohit Mittal, Senior Energy Specialist and Frederico Gil Sander, Lead Economist of the World Bank and Task Team Leaders for the operation.

Source: worldbank.org


INDIA

gujarat hC notiCe to govt on allot-ment of village land for windmill projeCtsThe Gujarat High Court issued notice to the state and central governments on a PIL challenging allotment of ‘gauchar’ land (village pastures) in Kutch district to private companies for setting up windmills.

In his petition, Kasam Sidhiq said that environmental impact assessment was not done before giving away these land to private wind-energy firms. The allot-ment of gauchar land to private firms will adversely impact the Maldhari community which traditionally rears cattle, the peti-tioner said.

“The manner in which windmills are being erected leads to serious damage to agriculture activities in the vicinity,” the petition further claimed. Local panchayats illegally passed resolutions favouring allot-ment of land to private firms, it claimed.

Also, “reduction of gauchar land leads to a scenario where cattle owners are com-pelled to let the cattle on roads and in the open which creates public nuisance”, the PIL said.

A division bench of Chief Justice R Subhash Reddy and Justice V M Pancholi issued the notice, seeking replies by August 29.


SOLAR PROJECTS

haryana government to install solar energy systems in sChools

amity university installs on-site solar power plants at its Campuses

The Haryana government is planning to install solar energy systems in educational institutes of the state in a bid to bring more students to classrooms by reducing power outages.

Amity University has adopted onsite solar power in its Jaipur, Manesar and Gwalior campuses in association with CleanMax Solar.

he initiative comes at a time when only 48 per cent students of state-run schools passed in the Haryana board examinations of class 10 this year. Compared to this, 90 per cent of gov-ernment school students passed the CBSE class 10 board in Delhi.

leanMax solar has installed on-site solar plants in its Jaipur, Manesar and Gwalior campuses with a cumulative capacity of 1.8 MWp, CleanMax Solar said in a statement. Based on the ‘pay as you go’ or commonly known as ‘OPEX’ model, the CleanMax Solar has provided solar power to Amity University at a tariff, cheaper than the grid electricity tariff, thereby ensuring cumulative savings of over Rs one crore per annum.

As part of the initiative, a full solar structure consisting of solar panels, power conditioning unit (PCU) and batteries will be installed in schools free of cost. A total of 2 lakh students will be sensitised about the benefits of solar energy through this project. Apart from schools, the BJP-led state government is also planning to generate 80 KW electricity via solar energy systems to be installed in various government buildings in the millennium city. The Haryana government is also offering 30 per cent subsidy on every set of solar equipment. To promote nationwide adoption of solar energy, the central government had launched the National Solar Mission in 2010 which aims to achieve 100 GW of solar energy by 2022.

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The installation of solar energy systems in schools is part of the state government’s am-bitious ‘Mhara Gaon Jagmag Gaon’ program which aims at providing electricity to rural areas of the state,” Rameshwar Singh, nodal officer of renewable energy, Gurgaon range said. Elaborating on the plan, the official said solar energy will help in running fans, water coolers as well as practical labs in schools, with just one-time investment from the state government.

The state officials are hopeful that the initiative would moti-vate more children to come to schools. “We are also encourag-ing private renewable energy companies to adopt schools of Haryana under their CSR responsibility and install solar sys-tems. Recently, a private company adopted 100 schools across the country. It started the campaign from Haryana’s most backward district of Mewat, providing 16 hours of electricity in schools there,” Singh said. “Hundreds of Mewat villagers and students are happy with the availability of electricity made by solar energy,” he said.

The total solar installations across the three Amity Universities cam-puses is 1.8 MW capacity, thereby abating 2,265 tonnes of CO2 and which means it has the potential take almost 480 passenger vehicles off road per year,” Gajanan Nabar, CEO, CleanMax Solar, said.

Source: PTI

1.5 lakh farmers to get grant for solar pumps:haryana ministerHe urged the villagers to contribute in the conservation of water for future generations. VSD.

Source: PTI

Haryana Minister of State for Renewable Energy Ban-wari Lal said that the state government would bring a scheme, under which, about 1.50 lakh farmers would be given a grant for solar pump-ing set.

Those farmers who have applied for tube-well con-nection would be included in the scheme, he said. Lal said that a boosting pump was installed in Khetawas village at a cost of about Rs 14.98 lakh and water works have been renovated at a cost of about Rs 42.70 lakh in Nilaheri, Jhajjar villages and this would permanently solve the drinking water problem.


SOLAR PROJECTS

vadodara airport to switCh to solar power soonThe power would be sourced from a plant located in the airport com-plex, having a capacity to generate 675 kw of power, which would help the airport save Rs 60 lakh every year on its electricity cost

The power would be sourced from a plant located in the airport complex, having a capacity to generate 675 kilowatt (kw) of power, which will help the airport save around Rs 60 lakh every year on its electricity cost, he said.

“The Airports Authority of India has installed this solar plant for which the contract worth Rs 3.5 crore was awarded to a private company. It will generate 675 kw of electricity, and also cut the annual electricity cost by around Rs 5 lakh per month,” said Singh.

He said while the Mumbai and Delhi airports are congested and the flights have to hover around these airports to get permissions for landing, “The capacity of the city airport remains underutilised.” Singh also sa id a private airline is set to launch flights to Jaipur, Indore, Bengaluru and New Delhi from here soon.

Source: PTI

The Vadodara airport will soon switch over to solar energy for its everyday operations to cut down its electricity cost, said a senior airport official. “The airport is all set to start using clean and green energy for its day-to-day opera-tions, as its ground-mounted grid-connected solar plant is ready for commissioning,” Vadodara airport Director Charan Singh said. The solar plant will meet 50 per cent requirement of the airport, he added.

tata power renewable energy limited Commissions 100 mw solar CapaCity in anthapuramu solar park, andhra pradeshTata Power, India’s largest integrated power company, announced that its 100% subsidiary Tata Power Renewable Energy Ltd. (TPREL) commis-sioned 100 MW (50 MW x 2) solar capacity in Anthapuramu Solar Park, Andhra Pradesh.

ith this, the overall operating renewable capacity of TPREL now stands at 2,215 MW in India. The sale of power from this solar plant has been tied up under a 25 year Power Purchase Agreement with Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI). This is part of the implementation of the MNRE scheme for develop-ing grid connected solar power capacity of Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM) Phase II, Batch-III of the Govern-ment of India through Viability Gap Funding (VGF) Mode.

WRenewable energy is the future for ‘New India’ and will play a big role in providing the country “24X7 Power for All by 2019. For a tropical country like India, solar energy has the highest potential. Tata Power is focused to constantly prolifer-ate the group’s renewable energy port-folio and we plan to add around 1000 MW renewable energy capacity to our portfolio every year, scaling it to 45-50% in the next five years, largely through organic growth.” Mr Praveer Sinha, CEO & Managing Director, Tata Power.

“The commissioning of 100 MW capacity in Anthapuramu has fortified our position as a leading renewable energy company in the country with a strong presence in solar power genera-tion. We will continue to seek poten-tial of sustainable growth in India and selected International geographies.” Mr. Ashish Khanna, President-Renew-ables, Tata Power said.

The company has organically added 159 MW wind & solar capacity in FY17 along with the acquisition of Welspun Renewables Energy Pvt. Ltd. last year.


hfm solar Commissions 300 kwp roof-top solar plantin greater noida.Solar Power Developer, HFM Solar Power Private Limited has commissioned a 300 kWp rooftop solar project at IEC Group of Institutions, Greater Noida.

uilt in collaboration with SECI and MNRE, the rooftop solar plant will help the institute save around Rs 21 lakh per annum. The solar plant will reduce emissions from grid power and backup diesel gen-erators, and will abate around 390tons of carbon dioxide per year.The company will provide solar power to IEC Group of Insti-tutions at tariffs that are cheaper than grid tariff based on the RESCO model.

We are committed to implementing innova-tive solar renewable energy projects to help Institutions such as IEC reduce the expen-diture on power.We aim to continue building solar power plants promoting a healthy and safe environment for the future “

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Medhir Jain, Director, HFM Solar said“We are constantly striving to in-clude environment-friendly ways of living and have taken several steps to encour-age Institutions to be more responsible towards our ecosystem. Adopting solar power is a much appreciated inclusion in that. We believe steps taken like these make all the difference. We are happy to note that the solar power supplied to IEC Group of Institutions will be at a cost which ismuch cheaper than the grid tariff, providing significant cost sav-ings to the Institu-tion as well.

SOLAR PROJECTS


SOLAR PROJECTS

"SB Energy choose Ecoppia after due dili-gence as it was providing the optimum solution. We are convinced that adopt-ing breakthrough technologies is key to coping with the challenging market conditions and increasing operational efficiency," said Abhijeet Sathe, COO at SB Energy.

"We are thrilled to be working with a technology-driven and forward-looking company like SB Energy," said Eran Meller, CEO of Ecoppia. "The unparalleled experience gained in India, especially in Rajast-han desert over the last three years, will enable us to seamlessly comply with SB Energy's high operations standards".

eCoppia expands bhadla park Cloud-based robotiC Cleaning footprint with additional 580 mwpEcoppia, the world leader in robotic, water-free photovoltaic solar panel cleaning solutions, announced an agreement with SB Energy, a wholly-owned subsidiary of SoftBank Group Corp., to deploy two thousand robots across its five sites in Bhadla Phase III & IV Solar Park Project in Rajasthan India.

his announcement comes on the heels of Ecoppia's recent completion of large-scale deployments with ENGIE and Ostro Power (Actis Group) in the Bhadla park. Bhadla is a water-deficient region that suffers from frequent and massive dust storms, resulting in panel soiling that can reduce energy output. To minimize the loss of production capacity due to soiling, while keeping in line with SB Energy's focus on automation and robotics, the company chose Ecoppia's state-of-art system to ensure efficient and intelligent module cleaning at the plant. SB Energy's project panels will be cleaned daily by Ecoppia robots without any human interference and will be re-motely managed through a cloud-based control system. The water-free Ecoppia solution will save approx. over 2 billion of liters of water during the 25 years of solar plant operations.

With over 1.5 GW of projects deployed or under deployment, and nearly 3 GW of secured projects with leading energy conglomerates worldwide, Ecoppia is revolutionizing the solar O&M space.

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azure power wins 160 mw solar power projeCt with the highest tariff in uttar pradesh auCtion

Azure Power (NYSE: AZRE), a leading independent solar power producer in India, announced it has won a 160 MW solar power project in Uttar Pradesh at the highest tariff in a recent auction conducted by the Uttar Pradesh New & Renewable Energy Development Agency (UPNEDA).

zure Power will sign a 25-year power purchase agreement with Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Lim-ited (UPPCL) which has a domestic debt rating of A+ by CRISIL, a S&P company, at a tariff of INR 3.55 (~US 5.2 cents) per kWh, ~45% higher than the lowest tariff bid for a solar project in India. The project is expected to be commissioned in 2019 and developed outside a solar park. With this win Azure Power’s solar portfolio will be 260 MWs in Uttar Pradesh which is the most populous state in India and has a large peak energy supply deficit, according to the Central Electricity Au-thority. Azure Power is one the largest solar developers in Uttar Pradesh and built the first utility scale solar project in Uttar Pradesh in 2015.

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Tariff of INR 3.55 (~US 5.2 cents) per kWh is ~45% higher than the lowest tariff bid for a solar project in India.With this win, Azure Power’s solar portfolio will be 260 MWs in the state of Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state in India.

Speaking on this occasion, Inderpreet Wadhwa, Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Azure Power said, “We are pleased to announce our win in Uttar Pradesh, and with this we have once again demonstrated our strong project development, engineering, and execution capabilities. We are delighted to make this contribution to-wards realization of our Hon’ble Prime Minister’s commitment towards clean and green energy, through solar power generation.”


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SOLAR PROJECTS

rewa ultra mega solar projeCt starts produCing power

750 MW Project to meet 90% of Day Demand of Delhi Metro.First Solar Project in India having different Categories of Off-take Customers.Project would lead to of CO2 avoidance of 15.4 lac tonnes annually, which would need planting of 2.6 crore trees Only project with World Bank & CTF loan.Won World Bank President’s Award for transaction struc-ture.

Rewa Ultra Mega Solar Limited (RUMS), announced that power supply from the Rewa Solar Power Project has commenced from midnight of July 6, 2018. The 750MW Solar Project in Rewa district of Madhya Pradesh, spread over an area of 1590 acres, is among the largest single-site solar power plants in the world.

ewa project has been acknowledged in India and abroad for its robust project structuring and numerous innovations. Many of its features have been incorporated in the Standard Bidding Guide-lines for solar parks is-

sued by Government of India. The learnings from the development of this project can be utilized for the improvement of project imple-mentation practices all over the globe. This is the first project in the country supplying pow-er to an inter-state open access customer, viz., Delhi Metro. This opens up an entirely

new chapter in utilization of Renewable en-ergy in the country, where large institutional open access consumers can start procuring inexpensive RE. This also diversifies the off taker categories, not limiting just to the state Discoms. MPPMCL, which supplies power to the state Discoms, will get 76% of the power produced from Rewa Solar Power plant, while the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) will benefit from the remaining 24%. The project is estimated to meet up to 90% of the day electricity demand from DMRC. The commissioning of this project will poten-tially result in a saving of Rs 4,600 crore to state DISCOMs and Rs. 1,400 crore to Delhi Metro over its project life.

RSpeaking on the occasion, Shri Shivraj Singh Chauhan, Hon’ble Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh said that, Rewa Project is a living example of transpar-ency that Madhya Pradesh Government believes in. The bidding for the project was conducted online for as long as the bidders were interested, 33 hours with-out stop. The project made possible an investment of over Rs 4,000 crore in the State. He said that the environmental impact of the project is like plant-ing 2.6 crore trees. He added that the project has started producing merely 17 months from the historical bidding in February 2017, which has been possible because of the support of the entire State Government.

The project is an important step in the clean energy targets of the country. The 750MW project would lead to avoidance of CO2 generation of 15.4 lac tonnes every year. This environmentally positive impact could have been accomplished by plant-ing as many as 2.6 crore trees. The Rewa Solar plant is India’s first and till now the only solar project to get funding from Clean Technology Fund (CTF), which is available at a rate of 0.25% for a 40-year period. It is also the first and the only solar park in India to get a concessional loan from the World Bank. The development of internal evacu-ation infrastructure of the plant has been un-dertaken with concessional funds from CTF and World Bank. This has enabled Rewa Project to have very low solar park charges, which was one of the contributing features behind the low tariff achieved in Rewa Project. The project features an innovative design of contracts to address the varying demand pattern of the off-takers. Optimum scheduling has been developed on first principles, which allows meeting almost 90% of the day time electricity demand of Delhi Metro. The Project has a three-tier payment security Mechanism, implemented for the first time in India. Government of Madhya Pradesh extended its State’s Guarantee to ensure regular payments from MP Discoms to the developers. Another innovation of Rewa Project is the develop-ment of Payment Security Fund, purely on market principles with IREDA, and without any budgetary allocation from Government of India as was being done in other projects.

The project is being developed by

Mahindra Renewables, ACME Solar Hold-ings and Solengeri Power – who emerged as the winnersfor project’s three units at tariffs of Rs 2.979, Rs 2.970 and Rs 2.974 for the first year. This was the lowest tariff discovered at that point in time through a bidding process for solar projects in India. RUMS was created only in July 2015 as a Joint Venture of SECI and MP Urja Vikas Nigam, with Mr Manu Srivastava, Principal Secretary, New & Renewable Energy Department, Government of MP as its Chairperson from the beginning. The project was included in the Prime Minister’s “A Book of Innovation: New Beginnings”. The Project has been appreciated in Global Infrastructure Facility, created by the World Bank, for its optimum distribution of risks and has been held as a model project for at-tracting investment from multilateral banks, institutional investors, etc. into Emerging Economies.

The project got all possible support from various Ministries of Government of India(GoI), especially, MNRE, Ministry of Power, DEA, as also GoI organizations namely, SECI, PowerGrid, IREDA and NISE (which served as the Independent Engineer). The project was extended full support by Government of MP, especially, Departments of New & Renewable Energy, Energy, Finance, Revenue, Law, Forest, etc., as also MP Transco and MPUVN. The project is an expression of commitment of Madhya Pradesh to fulfill the promises made by India to the world community and to the next generation of developing 100 GigaWatt solar energy by 2022.

Shri Narayan Singh Kushwaha, Hon’ble Minister for New & Renewable Energy said that “it is a matter of happiness that the project would give environmentally friendly power to the

state at an extremely low rate of Rs. 2.97 per unit, which is even less than our average power procurement cost. It is also a matter of hap-piness that, after meeting the requirement of Madhya Pradesh, the power would also be supplied to Delhi Metro and Delhi Metro would run on MP’s power.”


hfm solar Commissions 330 kwp roof-top solar plant in guwahatiSolar Power Developer, HFM Solar Power Private Limited has commissioned a 330 kWp roof-top solar project at Royal Global Institutions, Guwahati. The roof-top solar was built in collaboration with SECI and MNRE.

The company will provide solar power to Royal Global Institutions at tariffs that are cheaper than grid tariff based on the RESCO model. e are happy to note that the solar

power supplied to Royal Global Institutions will be at a cost which isdrastically cheaper than the grid tariff, providing substantial cost sav-ings to the Institution as well. When distinguished institutions such as Royal Global move towards sustain-ability, they set an example for the public to adopt sustainable ways of living. We are extremely happy to help them reduce its dependence on conventional sources of energy and adopt rooftop solar projects to meet their daily power needs.We have a responsibility to help reduce CO2 emissions and contribute towards the objective of energy conservation.”

Dharmendra Jain, Director, HFM Solar said “Rooftop Solar Segment is growing rapidly in India and with more visibility of rooftop Solar on residential, commercial, industrial, institutional buildings, the awareness about the same is also increasing. Government is also supporting the sector by introducing practical policies encouraging rooftop development and removing policy hurdles making it simpler.

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SOLAR PROJECTS


TECHNOLOGY

alta deviCes breaks solar energy effiCienCy reCord

baCteria-powered solar Cell Can produCe eleCtriC-ity on Cloudy daysAlta Devices has announced that its most recent single junction solar

cell has been certified by NREL (National Renewable Energy Labora-tory) as being 28.9% efficient.

The cell generated a current stronger than any previously recorded from such a device, and worked as efficiently in dim light as in bright light

his certification confirms that Alta has set a new record and continues to hold the world record efficiency for this type of solar cell. This breakthrough, combined with the unique thinness and flexibility of Alta’s cells, redefines how solar technology can be used to empower autonomy in many applications.

cientists, including one of Indian origin, have discovered a low-cost and sustain-able way to build a solar cell using bacte-ria, that can harvest energy from light even under overcast skies. The cell, developed by researchers from University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada, generated a current stronger than any previously recorded from such a device, and worked as efficiently in dim light as in bright light. With further development, these solar cells – called “biogenic” because they are made of living organisms – could become as efficient as the synthetic cells used in conventional solar panels.

Autonomous systems are predicted to become a part of daily life – often operating without human intervention. However, every time an autonomous system or vehicle has to stop to refuel or recharge, it requires intervention and is no longer truly autonomous. Alta focuses on developing the world’s best solar technology specifically for autonomous power, allowing vehicles to seamlessly recharge while in motion. Alta Devices has held continuous world records for solar efficiency for most of the last decade. Alta Devices Founders, Professor Harry Atwater of Caltech and Profes-sor Eli Yablonovitch of the University of California Berkeley explained the significance of this record:

Solar cells are the building blocks of solar panels. They do the work of converting light into electrical current. Previous efforts to build biogenic solar cells have focused on extract-ing the natural dye that bacteria use for photosynthesis. It is a costly and complex process that involves toxic solvents and can cause the dye to degrade. The UBC team left the dye in the bacteria. They genetically engineered E coli to produce large amounts of lycopene – a dye that gives tomatoes their red-orange colour and is particularly effective at harvesting light for conversion to energy. The researchers coated the bacteria with a mineral that could act as a semi-conductor, and applied the mixture to a glass surface. With the coated glass acting as an anode at one end of their cell, they generated a current density of 0.686 milli amperes per square centimetre – an improvement on the 0.362 achieved by others in the field.

“We recorded the highest current density for a biogenic solar cell,” said Yadav.

The cost savings are difficult to estimate, but Yadav believes the process reduces the cost of dye production to about one-tenth of what it would be otherwise. The holy grail would be finding a process that doesn’t kill the bacteria, so they can produce dye indefinitely, said Yadav.

There are other potential applications for these biogenic materials in mining, deep-sea exploration and other low-light environments.

The company has recently launched its Gen4 Any-Light™ commercial technology, demonstrating a significant weight reduction from the previous version, resulting in an improved power to weight ratio of 160 percent. This is critical for tomorrow’s autonomous UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), electric vehicles, and sensors. It can be used to generate substantial power over small surfaces without compromising design criteria.

T S“Alta Devices goal is to continue to lead the industry in solar technology and to en-able a broad range of autonomous systems. We believe this is the best way to support the innovations of our customers,” said Jian Ding, Alta Devices CEO.

“These hybrid materials that we are developing can be manufactured economically and sustainably, and, with sufficient optimisation, could perform at comparable efficiencies as conventional solar cells,” said Vikramaditya Yadav, a professor at UBC.

Prof. Atwater said, “Achieving a new record for this class of devices is a landmark because a 1-sun, 1-junc-tion cell is the archetypal solar cell. The fact that Alta is breaking its own record is also significant since many other teams have been actively at-tempting to break this record.”

Elaborating on the fundamental technical un-derstanding that has driven this achievement, Professor Yablonovitch said, “Alta has the first solar cell based on Internal Luminescence Extraction, which has enabled Alta to remain ahead of others. This scientific principle will be in all future high efficiency solar cells.”

Source: PTI


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Global Headquarters & Factory: Meilin Tashan Indsutrial Zone,Ninghai, Ningbo 315609. China Tel: +86 574 59953231 Fax: +86 574 59953599 E-mail: [email protected]

India Sales Contact:"REGUS", 2nd Floor, Hotel Ibis Building, 26/1 Hosur Main Road, Bommanahalli, Bangalore 560068. India.Cell: +91 9611333011 Fax: +91 80 6702 7001Email: [email protected] S.K.Tejaswi Cell: +91 9849494675Email : [email protected]

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www.risenenergy.com


TECHNOLOGY

adani solar gets global reCognition on durability and reliability

li zhenguo: pv will be the Cheapest power sourCe in most parts of the world

Mundra Solar PV Limited, the solar manufacturing arm of Adani group, has emerged as the only Indian company to feature in the fourth an-nual PV Module Reliability Scoreboard report, recently released by DNV GL.

ublished by the world’s largest resource of independent energy experts the report is the most complete publicly available comparison of PV module reliability test results.Mundra Solar PV Limited has been awarded the top award for three rigor-ous tests- Thermal Cycle 600, a Dynamic Load Test (DML), and Potential Induced Degradation (PID). The report has been published by the world’s largest resource of independent energy experts.

He said that, as photovoltaics and energy storage provide the cheapest energy source, the ideal of “Solar for Solar” can be realized in the future. By 2050, PV will become an industry that generates thousands of giga-watts (GWs) per year.

The solar installations are expected to cross the 100 GW (gigawatt) mark in 2018. The healthy surge in installations is driven by higher efficiency PV (Photovoltaics) modules with new materials projecting higher returns and lower levelized cost of electricity (LCOE). Adani Solar is the first Indian company to vertically integrate businesses that offer services across the spectrum of photovoltaics manufactur-ing and is optimised for scaling up to 3 GW of modules and cells under a single roof.

LONGi is the world’s largest manufacturer of solar mono-crystalline silicon photovoltaic products. Since its establish-ment, it has always focused on single crystal technology and engaged in monocrystalline silicon wafers, single crystal cells and modules, distributed photovoltaic power plants and ground photovoltaic power plants. In Photon’s triathlon rank-ing, LONGi has the best financial health index ranked first and one of the best financial stability indexes.

LONGi has a research and development (R&D) team of more than 450 people and has obtained 260 national pat-ents. Since its listing in 2012, the company has invested a to-tal of US$ 385 million in research and development, ranking first in the global photovoltaic industry. The largest provider of monocrystalline wafers and components in the world, LONGi in 2017 has an operating revenue of US$ 2.556 billion, a net profit of US$ 557 million, and the total asset of US$ 5.14 billion.

According to Ramesh Nair, Chief Execu-tive Officer of Mundra, Adani implements state-of-art facility with best industry practices to ensure superior performance. “Developers and investors should be aware that not all manufacturers have their modules tested for quality and reliability to vouch for their product lifetime.

Procuring unevaluated modules is always a risk that could have major ramifications for their projects. Adani is a committed manufacturer which has implemented state-of-the-art facility with best industry practices ensuring superior performance and reliability of its products,” said Nair.

Anshul Khandelwal, Head Sales, and Marketing of Mundra Solar PV Limited added that DNV GL is an invaluable tool for the developers. “DNV GL’s PV Module Reliability Scorecard is an invaluable tool that developers should use for overall procurement strategy. This ensures the projects are built with reliable and durable products that would perform as expected; ensuring best returns,” said Khan-delwal.

P

Source: ANI Source: LONGi Green Energy Technology Co., Ltd. (LONGi)

At the 9th Sino-German Economic and Technical Cooperation Forum held in Berlin, Germany, Li Zhenguo, President of LONGi Green Energy Technology Co., Ltd. (LONGi), a leading Chinese PV industry company, made a keynote speech for the Energy Transformation and Energy Conservation Theme Forum, saying that in the next three years solar PV will become the cheapest power source in most parts of the world.


isro develops teChnology to mass produCe solar Cells in india that Can help save Crores

Until now India was dependent on the United States for the import of solar cell technology for 180 of its satellites produced since 1975. One of the major parts of satellites is the onboard solar power system called space solar cells as it keeps the satellite alive.

owever, Indian Space and Research Organisation might be able to save thousands and crores of money as it has brought mass producing, solar technology cells right to India. Around 1,500 solar cells are needed for producing small, remote sensing sat-ellites. While 10,000 to 15,000 solar cells are required for bigger satellites like GSAT. All of which are imported from the US. ISRO used around 20,000 solar cells for developing the country’s heaviest satellite– GSAT-11.

H ISRO Chairman K Sivan told The Times Of India, “Till now, we have been procuring space cells from US private companies for produc-ing our satellite. Being a critical technology, imported cells costed us dearly.”

TECHNOLOGY


exide industries, india’s largest manufaCturer of batteries, and leClanChé announCe the launCh of a new joint venture to build lithium-ion batteries and energy storage solutions to power the growth of india’s eleCtriC vehiCle market• Exclusive joint venture (JV) agreement signed on 27 June 2018 to address India’s transition to green energy and clean transportation• Well timed JV, ideally positioned to be a leading provider to emerging multi GWh storage markets for electric vehicles and grid connected ap-

plications in India

Exide Industries Ltd, India’s largest manufacturer of lead acid storage batteries and power storage solutions provider (BSE: 500086), and Leclanché SA (SIX: LECN), one of the world’s leading energy storage solution companies, headquar-tered in Switzerland, announced today a joint venture to build lithium-ion batteries and provide energy storage systems for India’s electric vehicle market and grid-based applications.

ith all the major cities in the world suffering from record-break-ing pollution levels, there is an urgent

need for radical new ways to power transport. Countries all over the world are working to find alternative solutions to reduce harmful NOx emissions, which are damaging to human health and the environment. As part of the JV, Leclan-ché will provide access to its knowhow and intellectual property for lithium-ion cells, modules and battery manage-ment systems and Exide Industries will leverage its extensive sales network and brand. As a result of this unique combi-nation, the JV is ideally positioned to be a leading provider of storage solutions for electric vehicles and energy storage ap-plications in India and will also contribute to developing solutions to increase the amount of renewable energy that is used and reduce India’s dependence on fossil fuels.

The JV’s production plant will be based in Gujarat. Exide Industries, which is committed to setting up large-scale man-ufacturing of lithium-ion batteries, will be the majority shareholder and Leclanché will be the strategic minoity shareholder of the JV. A module and battery pack as-sembly line is expected to be operational by Q2 2019 and a lithium-ion cell produc-tion plant is expected to be in operation by mid 2020. In the intervening period, cells will be sourced from Leclanché’s plant in Willstätt, Germany. The JV will focus on e-transport, stationary energy storage systems and speciality storage markets. In e-transport, the target seg-ment is fleet vehicles including e-buses, e-wheelers and e-rickshaws.

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ELECTRIC VEHICLES

Gautam Chatterjee, CEO of Exide Industries, said: “Leclanché SA is the perfect partner for us in India. The Company brings superior tech-nology, modules and battery management sys-tems, as well as immediate access to engineer-ing resources to build market-ready products.

“This ideally compliments our leading position in the lead acid storage bat-tery market in India and will allow us to take the lead in the lithium-ion battery industry, which is expected to grow significantly in the next few years. “Efforts to develop alternate state-of-the-art technologies such as lithium-ion batteries and energy storage solutions are an important step in tackling the environmen-tal challenges.”

“Exide’s selection of Leclanché as its partner of choice is a testament to Leclanché’s deep knowhow and IP and a significant endorsement of our world-leading cell and energy storage technologies, which are the product of our strong heritage and a decade of investment in lithium-ion R&D and pro-duction. “In a region that is expected to be one of the world’s largest and fast-est growing markets for electric vehicles, the JV shall provide Leclanché with giga-scale procurement volumes, which will help reduce costs, and increase recurring annuity revenues, generating recurring stable revenue growth for the Company.

Anil Srivastava, CEO of Leclanché, said: “It is a huge honour that Leclanché has been chosen by Exide Industries, India’s largest battery manu-facturer, to partner with them in their quest to help India achieve its zero emissions goals and reduce the country’s dependence on fossil fuel.

“This is an important milestone in our stated growth strategy and further ev-idence that the opportunity for Leclanché is now. We very much look forward to working with Exide Industries in delivering the best that Leclanché has to offer: superior cell technologies, IP and knowhow that combines high quality German engineering and Swiss precision with deep experience in the design and implementation of battery storage solutions.”

Source: Leclanche


PV MANUFACTURING

meyer burger awarded further ContraCt for its swCt™ platform

state of the art faCtory open-ing by sungrow for india base

Meyer Burger Technology Ltd (SIX Swiss Exchange: MBTN) announced the successful conclusion of a strategic agreement for its award winning SWCT™ technology with an important international solar module manufacturer in Southeast Asia.

Sungrow, the global leading inverter solution supplier for renewables, has officially opened its state of the art manufacturing plant for a total capacity of 3GW annually in Bengaluru, India on 27th July, 2018.

eyer Burger will deliver and install the 200 MW SWCT™ manufac-turing platform towards the end of 2018. Commissioning and ramp-up of the SmartWire solar module production line at this customer using Heterojunction (HJT) solar cells supplied by an external party is planned for the first half of 2019.

s per the Sungrow expansion plan for the launch of manufacturing plant in the second half of year 2018, the market commitments to Indian market have been fulfilled. The facility will be used for the production of central and string inverters, fulfilling Indian as well as international demands. From this, Sungrow has taken one further step to stabilize its position of the world’s No.1 solar inverter company.

Sungrow is one of the leading inverter companies in India. In the past two years, over 2 GW has been in-stalled by Sungrow India. In response to the growing market demands, Sungrow established the factory in India, which will greatly improve the company’s global delivery capacity and better serve customers.

To some extent, the new factory launched will also reduce the political crisis and PV market implications, restoring the market confidence. Sungrow is always committed to present versatile resources to meet our customers’ needs. This infra-structure will help fulfil the company mission of “Clean power for all” and its vision of becoming a global leader of clean power conversion technology.

Meyer Burger’s ground-breaking SmartWire Connection Technology employs an innovative foil-wire electrode with up to 24 perfectly aligned wires to connect solar cells. This reduces silver consumption per heterojunction solar mod-ule by over 50% which in turn reduces production costs for solar module manufacturers. The resulting dense wire contact matrix enables SWCT™ modules to easily cope with the increased power extraction necessary for today’s high efficiency heterojunction solar cells enabling energy yields of up to 20% to 30% more power per installed module in comparison to standard modules with PERC and PERT cell technologies. The resulting structure of a SWCT™ module significantly strengthens its stability and enhances its lifetime. The powerful combination of higher energy yield, longer module lifetime and lower manufac-turing costs delivers the lowest LCOE in the photovoltaic industry today.

In May 2018 at the SNEC, one of the world’s largest PV trade exhibitions, Meyer Burger’s SWCT™ stringer platform received a 2018 Technology Highlight award by PV Magazine recognizing its advantages over standard cell connection processes.

smartwire ConneCtion teChnology (swCt™) the natural evolution in Cell ConneCtion teChnology

MA

Source: sungrowpower


PV MANUFACTURING

solar developers ask government to rethink on manufaCturing-linked tendersSolar project developers have requested the government to reconsider the proposed large scale, manufacturing-linked solar power tenders, saying it would compel them to foray into equipment manufacturing, which is a completely different business requiring different skillsets.

olar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) had earlier this year floated a 5 GW manufacturing tender linked with 10 GW power purchase agreement, as part of a government plan to revive the ailing solar manufacturing industry in the country. The technical bid for the tender was supposed to open later this month, but it has been post-poned to third week of August, as the developers’ have expressed their concerns in the pre-bid meeting.

“It is being perceived that, by linking PPA (power pur-chase agreement) with solar equipment manufacturing, government is compelling them (independent power producers, or IPPs) to get into manufacturing — which is cause of concern for most developers,” said SPDA whose members include industry bigwigs such as Re-New Power, Avaada Power, Acme Solar, Green Infra, Azure Power, SPRNG Energy, and Hero Future Energies.

“Members of SPDA have expressed their reluctance in venturing in solar manu-facturing,” it said. ET re-viewed a copy of the letter sent earlier this week.S

Risks involved in setting up of power projects and venturing into manufacturing of equipment are not comparable either, as the power sector is highly regulated while manufacturing business is largely market driven, Solar Power Developers Association (SPDA) has said in a letter to power minister R K Singh.


ja solar vietnam seCures long-term buyer Credit loan faCility of us$68.4 million with China minsh-eng bank Corporation lim-ited shijiazhuang branCh for proCurement of equip-ment at vietnam faCility

blaCkroCk plans its larg-est ever alternative invest-ment fundraiser

A Solar Holdings Co., Ltd. (Nasdaq:JASO) (“JA Solar” or the “Company”), one of the world’s largest manufacturers of high-performance solar power products, announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary, JA Solar Vietnam Company Limited (“JA Solar Vietnam”, or the “Sub-sidiary”) had entered into a long-term buyer credit loan agreement with China Minsheng Bank Corporation Limited Shijiazhuang Branch (the “Lender”) to fund the procurement of equipment at JA Solar Vietnam’s 1.5 GW of wafer manufacturing facility.

BlackRock Inc is planning to raise $3.5 billion for investments in energy infrastructure in what is poised to be its largest alternative invest-ment fund yet, an executive at the world’s largest asset manager told Reuters.

nder the terms of the loan agree-ment, the Lender agreed to provide the Subsidiary with a loan facility of up to US$68,396,100 with a seven-year term. In addition, the Company had signed a guarantee agreement with the Lender, under which the Company will provide corporate guarantee against the loan facility.

BlackRock, known more for its stock and bond funds, has been building up its infrastructure unit, which it started in 2011. Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink has told analysts this year that he expects so-called illiquid alternative investments, which include private equity and typically come with higher fees than its other funds, to “be one of the more significant” drivers for BlackRock’s business over the next few years. The latest fundraising comes just over a year after BlackRock closed a deal to buy First Reserve Corp’s Energy Infrastruc-ture Funds unit, bringing over some of that company’s exist-ing funds and employees.

Overall, BlackRock manages $6.3 trillion in assets, includ-ing $41 billion on the “real assets” team that includes the energy infrastructure business.

he company announced that it has already raised $1.5 billion for the Global Energy and Power Infrastruc-ture Fund III. The private fund will fo-cus on operating infrastructure, such as power plants, pipelines and wind farms, in developed markets, poten-tially including the United States.U T

Mark Florian, BlackRock’s global head of its energy and power infrastructure team, said there is growing demand for new infrastructure as countries around the world shift from coal and nuclear power sources to natural gas and renewable energy.He said large utilities and global energy companies are outsourcing the management and development of infrastructure, creating an opportunity for investment organizations such as his that want to provide capital.“The needs are just getting bigger,” Florian said in a telephone interview.

Source: in.reuters

aCme solar Cuts ipo size to rs 10 bn-rs15 bnThe company started pre-marketing the IPO last October and was tar-geting a launch early this year. However, investors were not willing to pay the valuation demanded by the issuer.

ndian renewable energy company Acme Solar Holdings has downsized its proposed IPO to Rs-10bn-Rs15bn (US$147m-$219m) from Rs22bn as it plans to sell some of its assets, people with knowledge of the transaction have said. The company started pre-marketing the IPO last October and was targeting a launch early this year. However, investors were not willing to pay

the valuation demanded by the issuer. The company plans to resubmit the draft prospectus with the revised numbers soon. The IPO will comprise only primary shares. Acme Solar reported a net loss of Rs680m in the financial year to March 31 2017 versus a loss of Rs54.8m in 2016. It owns 874 MW of solar power capacity and plans to increase it to 1,814 MW by the end of the year. The company had initially considered an infrastructure investment trust (InvIT) IPO but the weak listing of the IRB InvIT Fund and India Grid Trust, the two listed InvITs to date, prompted it to go for a regular IPO.Deutsche Bank is no longer part of the syndi-cate while Citigroup and ICICI Securities remain.

I

Source: reuters

BUSINESS & FINANCE


FEATURED

LIGHTNING PROTECTIONFor Pv Power Plant

A Safety Requirement:

With an annual newly installed capacity of some gigawatts, green field PV power plants are becoming an integral part

of modern power supply systems in India. Today large-scale power plants with a capacity of hundreds of MW, are installed which are directly connected to grid at high-voltage level. Solar plants, which are obviously exposed, are expected to generate electricity for 25 years and face, every year, various weather-related hazards- lightning being most common and most dangerous amongst all.A lightning strike, anywhere on the plant or on the lines can affect the generation drastically apart from posing threat of life to the service personnel at the plant.

risk of a lightning strike to struCtures suCh as pv power plants

There is a connection between the solar radiation, air humidity and frequency of lightning discharges. Regions with a high solar

radiation and air humidity are more susceptible to lightning strikes. The regional lightning frequency (lightning strikes per square kilometres/year) and the location and size of the PV power plant form the basis for calculating the probability of lightning strikes to the plant. PV systems are exposed to local weather conditions such as thunderstorms over decades. Ofcourse in India, like other parts of the world, the number of lightning strikes are increasing tremen-dously year after year. There were 70000 strikes recorded in March/April 2018 in India- which is too high a number.

BY : DEHN INDIA PVT.LTD


FEATURED

Damage to PV systems is caused both by the destructive effects of a direct lightning strike and inductive or capacitive

coupling of voltages caused by the electromagnetic lightning field. Moreover, voltage peaks resulting from switching operations on the upstream a.c. system can cause damage to PV modules, inverters, charge controllers and their monitoring and communi-cation systems.

Economic damage leads to replacement and repair costs, yield loss and costs for using the reserve power of the power plant. Lightning impulses also cause premature ageing of bypass diodes, power semiconductors and the input and output circuits of data systems, which leads to increased repair costs. In ad-dition, network operators place requirements on the availability of the energy produced. In India, National Building CodesNBC-

2016 and also IS standards IS 62305-(Parts 1-4) exist which talk about safety in solar installations against lightning strikes. Detailed standards are EN 50539-11 and EN 50539 – 12 for lightning and surge protection in solar installations. It is recom-mended to take lightning protection measures to be taken for PV systems > 10 kW of objects with alternative renewable power supply systems. The risk resulting from a lightning strike must be determined according to the IEC 62305-2 (EN 62305-2) standard and the results of this risk analysis must be considered at the design stage. For this purpose, DEHN + SOHNE offers the DEHNsupport software. A risk analysis performed by means of this software ensures a technically and economically optimised lightning protection concept which is understood by all par- ties involved and offers the necessary protection at reasonable costs.

neCessity of a lightning proteCtion system

measures for proteCting pv power plants from lightning interferenCe

To ensure effective protection, a lightning protection system with optimally coordinated

elements (air-termination system, earth-termi-nation system, lightning equipotential bonding, surge protective devices for power supply and data systems) is required. And, the selection of these coordinated elements is in accordance with minimum design criteriabased on risk analy-sis result carried as per IS 62305-2. IS 62305 clearly states the requirement and guidelines for lightning and surge protection measures to be adopted for PV power plants. Also, NBC 2016 illustrates in detail on lightning protection mea-sures for PV power plant structures and at the same time detailed recommendation is made for surge protection of electrical/electronic system in PV power plants. Since, U/I characteristic curve of PV current sources are very different from that of conventional dc sources, it does not only affect design and size of PV dc switches and PV fuses, but it also requires surge protection device capable of coping with PV characteristics.

Figure: A typical PV power plant layout with lightning and surge protection installed

Figure: Rolling sphere and protection angle method illustration


BUSINESS & FINANCE

greenbrillianCe usa annou nCes pv manufaCturing in the united states

adb supports bangladesh with off-grid solar-driven irrigation pumping

Manufacturing of high-efficiency Solar Photovoltaic panels expected to create jobs in America.

Bangladesh is to receive a 20-million-U.S. dollar loan from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) together with an additional 25.44 million U.S. dollars in grant financing to spur off-grid solar photovoltaic (SPV) pumping for agricultural irrigation.

reenBrilliance USA, a leading turnkey solar solution provider in the Mid-Atlantic region, has an-nounced plans for manufacturing high-end photovoltaic solar panels in the United States. GreenBril-liance USA said that, by locally manufacturing high-efficiency crys-

talline and Bi-facial PV panels in the country, it will create hundreds of new jobs in a sector that is seen as critical to the economy. Renewable energy has become the center stage of the American economy with the steady growth of Solar in the utility and distributed markets within the United States and its time to bring manufacturing back to America.

According to the statement, the funding will support installation of at least 2,000 SPV pumping systems in areas without electricity access with an estimated 19.3 megawatts-peak of solar capacity. By replacing diesel pumping systems with SPV pumps, the project is ex-pected to result in a reduction of 17,261 tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually.

he grant financing comprises 22.44 million U.S. dollars from the Scaling up Renewable Energy in Low Income Coun-tries Program under the Strategic Climate Fund, and 3 million U.S. dollars is from the Clean Energy Fund for Output-based Aid under the ADB-administered Clean Energy Financing Partnership Facility.

GT“This 4th of July, is a great time to announce

our new Made-in-USA solar panels manu-facturing,” said Sumit Bhatnagar, President & CEO of GreenBrilliance USA. “We will be locally manufacturing our high-performance and high-quality PV modules. We hope to combine the internally developed state-of-the-art technology with the creativity and hard work of American workers to continue to deliver world-class products to our custom-ers. By manufacturing the panels in the USA, we intend to serve hundreds of installers and project developers nationwide, eagerly look-ing for better options in PV panels for their projects and customers. Dearth and lack of availability of “Made in USA” solar panels to-day have left a big void in the market space.”

“High diesel costs for irrigation are not sustainable and affordable for small farmers in rural Bangladesh,” ADB Senior Energy Specialist Aiming Zhou was quoted as saying in a statement. “In an area where grid electricity is not avail-able, using solar energy for irrigation is a promising alternative to diesel-based pumping systems. The project will help meet diverse energy demands, improve livelihoods because of less pollution, and result in savings from the reduction in diesel use for irrigation and other agricul-tural activities.”

Bhatnagar stated that the “Made-in-USA solar panels will not only be high performance and quality but be more competitive than any foreign product in the market. We intend to build relationships and work directly with install-ers nationwide by offering them not just a Solar Panel but a great experience”. He added that “The Company will be announcing details on the new manufacturing facility shortly”. Source: xinhuanet


BUSINESS & FINANCE

goodwe expands business operation faCilities in indiaGoodWe, one of the leading PV inverter manufacturers in the world, strengthens its commitment to developing markets with the announce-ment of the expansion of a new service support center in Mumbai, India.

his will allow GoodWe to provide better local support to projects and partners in the area, which is a key strategic market for GoodWe. With 69 GW installed renewable power capacity, India is set to become one of the largest global solar hubs in the coming years.

GoodWe has set up an integrated service system to cover the entire sales process and has already es-tablished service centers in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Turkey, Australia and India. GoodWe’s quali-fied service network team is available at all times to provide local technical support whenever and wherever re-quired. A professional team of autho-rized engineers can perform on-site inspections, testing and debugging and providing repair or replacement if necessary, using the latest techniques to maximize inverter performance while minimizing production or pro-cess downtime.

T

“GoodWe is always committed to optimize all kinds of resources to better meet our customers’ needs,” said Huang Min, CEO of GoodWe. “With our same level of unmatched R&D, manufactur-ing and service capabilities, the expansion of our service support capabilities in India will signifi-cantly enhance our strength to meet customer demands locally and elsewhere in the world,”

green Climate fund meeting ‘disappointing’, Chief quitsA Green Climate Fund (GCF) meant to channel billions of dollars to poor nations said it had had a “very difficult and disappointing” meeting in a new setback after U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out U.S. support last year.

Australian climate finance expert Howard Bamsey an-nounced he was stepping down as executive director of the GCF at the end of the four-day meeting in Songdo, South Korea, the GCF said in a statement.

he GCF, whose South Korean head-quarters opened in 2013 with back-ing from almost 200 nations, aims to help poor nations cut greenhouse gas emissions and adapt their economies to heatwaves, storms and rising seas. But it has been bogged down by dis-putes between rich and poor nations about how and where to invest.

T“This has been a very difficult and disappointing board meeting for all of us, but most importantly for those people who are most vulnerable to climate change impacts, and who depend on the activities of the Fund,” GCF chair Lennart Baage said in a statement.


RESEARCH & ANALYSIS

renewable energy Certifi-Cates to Continue faCe reg-ulatory Challenges: ind-ra

the pv market allianCe foreCasts a 200 gw pv mar-ket from 2022

The renewable energy certificates will continue to face regulatory challenges and obligated entities may prefer to buy clean energy directly, India Ratings and Research said.

According to the PV Market Alliance (PVMA), global PV markets should double during the next five years, reaching between 180 and 200 GW from 2022 in a more diversified market. Although a significant level of uncertainty prevails, the current transition period in China will not produce significant effects after 2020 and the PV market will continue its solid growth.

n April 2018, Appellate Tribunal of Electricity (APTEL) upheld CERC’s decision. The floor and ceiling prices of RECs determined by CERC methodology usually reflect the price discovered through renewable power reverse bids.

It said that trading volume in solar renewable energy certificates (RECs) had declined over 70 per cent y-o-y (year on year) on account of the stay on solar REC trading in May 2017. The trading has been restarted from April 2018, only after APTEL upheld CERC’s order. The stay order on trading non-solar RECs was lifted in July 2017 on the appeal of Indian Wind Power Associa-tion. The non-trading of solar RECs during FY18 resulted in a positive complementary effect on the trading of non-solar RECs which grew 120 per cent y-o-y in FY18, it said.

Solar RECs traded at floor prices during FY18 (for one month) and FY17. Non-solar RECs traded at an average clearing price of Rs 1,450 in FY18 compared to Rs 1,500 in FY17. Regulatory uncertainties coupled with higher supply of RECs and lower floor prices have further increased the revenue risks for those renewable projects, which depend on RECs for part of the revenue, Ind-Ra added. The increasing renewable energy penetration (excluding large-scale hydro power) into the Indian grid system (12% in FY12 to 19% in FY18 of the all India installed power capacity) and lower non-compliance of renewable pur-chase obligations by state utilities have been the major reasons for lower/stagnant REC trading at power exchanges, it said.During April-May 2018, both solar and non-solar RECs traded at the new floor prices. Ind-Ra expects the demand-supply mismatch for RECs to remain high and hence both the types of RECs would trade near or par floor prices, it added.

VMA anticipates that market demand will remain bullish, mainly driven by a continued strong growth in India, Eu-rope, and many emerging markets on all continents. On the short term, the effect of the transition period in China will lead to a market stagnation in the best case, with a possible decrease in 2018. How-ever, outside of China, the growth will be important, with a 2018 market above 60 GW against 45 GW in 2017. From 2019 onwards, the market should reach the 100 GW threshold and continue growing. The market will continue to diversify, with distributed applications growing in share, while new market segments will start to contribute significantly: floating PV, agri-cultural PV, but also BIPV and VIPV (PV for vehicles) will complement the existing ground-mounted and BAPV plants. Off-grid will remain marginal in volume while large-scale off-grid will grow, especially in Africa. New applications could represent up to 25% of the global PV market from 2022.

Combining an intimate knowledge of the market with thorough understanding of policy developments in both mature and emerging PV markets, the PVMA’s report constitutes one of the most reliable global PV market analyses available to date. Covering an in-depth regional perspective and detailed analysis of more than 40 individual PV markets, the report provides comprehensive insights allowing understanding and anticipating future PV global market developments, featuring dif-ferent scenarios according to international trade and energy conditions.

“The obligated entities may prefer to continue to buy renew-able power directly rather than using renewable energy certificates (DECs), to comply with their renewable power obligations,” an India Ratings and Research statement said.

I PIndia Ratings and Research (Ind-Ra) believes uncertain-ties in trading DECs will stay. Solar REC trading was further affected following Central Electricity Regulatory Commission’s (CERC) decision to reduce the floor and ceil-ing price of solar and non-solar RECs in March 2017.

Source: PTI Source: pvmarketalliance


he NPDC can co-exist with state dis-coms and own networks, and distrib-ute power, forcing state discoms to increase their operational efficiency and doing away with political influences. A central government-backed counter-party will enable many existing power projects, including small scale, to ac-

cess the capital market and avail fixed-interest bonds for a long tenure, Ind-Ra observed. It will address counterparty-related risks and help generation companies in gaining better credit ratings at a standalone level. At present, the credit ratings of existing power projects are capped at a certain maximum level by credit rating agencies, consider-ing the weak financial position of state discoms and delays in payables to generators. The proposed NPDC would help in developing an alternative to these state-owned discoms for power generators and will uplift the whole sector senti-ment. As the power ministry has increased the renewable purchase obligation (RPO) target to 21 per cent by 2022 from the current 17 per cent, the presence of an NPDC would lead to greater central control around the RPO compliance.

According to the latest market reports, the outcome of Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojana (UDAY) until FY2016-17 has been mixed. Of the 31 states and UTs that signed up for the UDAY scheme, only six states and one union territory have reported to have met the respective FY2016-17 targets to reduce aggregate technical and commercial losses.Also, only 10 UDAY entities managed to narrow the gap between their revenue and costs until FY2016-17.

urge comes as communities, nations and com-panies set clean-power targets, part of a growing global effort to curb climate change. The growth shows that the renewables boom has plenty of room to grow. In some markets, renewable en-ergy is the cheapest source of electricity. There are other factors driving the surge. More coun-tries are introducing renewables programs that encourage such deals. And for companies, long-

term contracts to buy clean power from wind and solar farms can also act as hedges against uncertain wholesale prices. That’s helping to deepen the pool of buyers beyond tech firms. Manufacturing and communications companies have emerged as prime buyers. Facebook Inc. was the biggest buyer in the first seven months of this year, followed by AT&T Inc., Norsk Hydro ASA, Alcoa Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Walmart Inc., ac-cording to the report. In the U.S., corporations signed a record 4.2 gigawatts of contracts this year, about 58 percent of the global total. They did so despite a wave of federal policies that have the potential to crimp demand for clean power, including tariffs on solar panels, steel and aluminum, and a sweeping overhaul of the federal tax policy.

“Corporate demand has proven resilient to any impacts by the Trump Administration,” Harrison said.

RESEARCH & ANALYSIS

The proposed national power distribution company is imperative to bring structural changes in power ecosystem, India Ratings and Research (Ind-Ra) said.

BUSINESSES AND PUBLIC AGENCIES ARE BUYING MORE CLEAN ENERGY THAN EVER BEFORE.

Companies and agencies, excluding utilities, agreed to buy 7.2 gigawatts of clean energy worldwide so far this year, already shattering the reco -rd of 5.4 gigawatts for all of 2017, according to a report Friday from Bloomberg NEF.

The central government is reportedly contemplating on forming a national power distribution company (NPDC) to streamline the ailing power distribution network in the country, which is currently operated by state distribution companies (discoms), the ratings agency said in a state-ment. The proposed NPDC’s scope may complement techni-cal and implementation capabilities of discoms, specially in implementing central government schemes in the power sector, it said.

TS

Source: PTI

proposed npdC imperative to bring struCtural Chang-es in power distribution: ind-ra

Corporate giants are buying so muCh Clean power this year they already broke 2017’s reCord

“It’s definitely not a one-year blip,” Kyle Harrison, a New York-based analyst at Bloomberg NEF, said in an interview.


INTERVIEW

INTERVIEW WITH Mr.Sven Kramer

Kramer: oday, teamtechnik group is Germany’s largest owner-managed company in the field of assembly and test equipment. We are independent and therefore highly flexible. For the global photovoltaic industry the company has specialized on high-throughput stringer machines. These high-performance produc-tion tools are designed to combine reliable 24/7 production with excellent quality. teamtechnik is therefore a global market leader in this segment. The company employs 1000 people around the world and has production and support sites in Germany, Poland, China and the USA. All Stringer Systems TT2100, TT4200GIGA and TT1600 ECA are manufactured at our headquarters in Frei-berg, Germany close to Stuttgart in the Southwest of Germany. teamtechnik group concentrates its efforts on three sectors: Solar, Automotive and Medtech. Together with our worldwide partners we support our customers all around the globe.A key new business area is also assembly and test lines for e-mobility solutions and batteries.

EQ: Solar Trade Wars : What are the benefits to Indian manufacturers Kramer: Nobody will win with a trade war. Protection is required if unfair competition is in the market. Unfair is for example if the selling price of solar modules are below the costs of materials. But there is an economy of scale. It will be difficult for a small manufacturer to compete with a big GW manufacturer which might be even vertically integrated. So certain protection and support is required to establish a solar manufacturing base in India.EQ: Whats is your market share in the solar pv manufacturing marketKramer: teamtechnik has more than 750 stringer systems in the market and more than 25 GWpof solar modules are produced every year on teamtechnik stringer systems. So far we have supplied more than 2 GW of stringer production capacity to India in the last 15 months.

EQ: Please describe in brief about your company, directors, promoters, investors, its vision & mission

Vice President Sales Solar Technology teamtechnik group, Germany


INTERVIEW

EQ: Technology road map in terms of 1500V , Double Glass, BiFacial Cells, PERC/PERT Technologies, Hetero Junction, 5-6 Busbars upcoming game changes technologies etc… Kramer: All of the above can be processed with teamtechnik equipment. All of our Stringers can process Bi-facial cells (if they can be soldered which depends on the paste used during the solar cell manufacturing process). If you use a bi-facial cell, then of course you have a double-glass design. One important item so far not many people paid attention to the ribbon position on the back side of the cell. Since we use our patented hold-down devices in combination with our vacuum transport system on our Stringers we can achieve a very precise ribbon positioning, not only on the front side but also on the back side of the cell. With a double-glass module you will see of course also the ribbon on the back side which is, with a conventional glass-backsheet module, normally covered up by the backsheet. The interesting question will be, how will solar module manufacturer measure the efficiency of the backside of the module with a bi-facial module. You can achieve approx. 10 % to 20% higher power output. But of course it depends on where the module will be installed and how much sun light will be reflected onto the backside. Our customers are using more and more PERC and PERT cells. Our Stringers are designed to process them without any issues. Also 5 and 6 busbars can be processed. We do not think that the number of busbars will increase above 6. We have performed a research study together with the SERIS institute of the University in Singapore. Simulations showed that the power increase from 6 to 7 busbars is minimal and it does not account for the higher cost of the materials and for having one additional ribbon within the module. In regards to the HJT technology we see that more manufacture will invest in the technology. We have developed a stringer tool which can interconnect the cells using electrically conductive adhesive (ECA), our TT1600ECA.The ECA-Stringer is designed for reliable series production with high unit volumes. The system connects HJT cells with light-capturing ribbons (LCRs) at a cycle rate of 2.25 seconds.

EQ:What are the trends in new manufacturing technology equipment, materials, processes, innovations etc… Kramer: teamtechnik and the Frauenhofer Institute for Solar Energy Sysems ISE in a research report stated that it is now possible to connect high efficiency solar cells using electrically conductive adhesives n series production. The results of the joint research project with the ECA-Stringer from teamtechnik show that the adhesive technology is ready for the market and can be used as an alternative to the widespread soft soldering interconnection technology. Due to the much lower process temperatures of this technology (remains below 180°C) compared to soldering, temperature-sensitive high efficiency solar cells can be connected using adhesives in a gentle and material-saving process. The reliability of the adhesive connection was confirmed in tests carried out in a climate chamber.Thirst orders of the Stringer 1600 ECA were already placed and delivered nowadays.

EQ: What are the various technologies available for manufacturing and whats the advantage & disadvantage in the tech or equipment you offer ? Kramer: We offer our Stringer System TT4200 GIGA and TT2100. In addition we can provide our Layup System matching the capacity of the Stringer Systems. The TT4200 GIGA is designed for customers with a production capacity with more than 250 MW. It is a compact system with a high production capacity. The soldering process itself is the same with the the TT2100. At the end of the day our customers have to decide which solution they prefer, depending on available space, production capacity and required redundancy.

For high efficient Hetero-Junction Solar Cells (HJT) we have the TT1600ECA in our product portfolio. With this technology teamtechnik connect the solar cells with a light trapping ribbon (LCR) and an Electrically Conductive Adhesive (ECA). Here we can provide a solution to customers who are interested in producing the next generation of solar modules.

EQ: Technology obsolescence : What solution you offer to your customers against possible future technology obsolescence when they buy your equipmentKramer: Our current systems are highly flexible and can easily be upgraded like to 6 busbars and a wide range of new cell and ribbon types. Also stringer systems which have been supplied several years ago, such as the TT1200HS, TT1600 or TT1800 can be upgraded to 5 busbars. The stringer system of that generationwas designed for the processing of 2, 3 or 4 busbar cells. Our engineers found a way to upgrade them to 5 busbars so that our customers can process these cells as well on our stringer systems. With the higher number of busbars the ribbons are getting narrower. Our latest stringer generations TT4200GIGA and TT2100 can handle ribbons with a width of only 0,6 mm.

As another item I would like to add that our stringer systems can be upgraded for the processing of light trapping ribbons (LTR). These ribbons have a special structure embossed to increase the reflection of the sunlight hitting the ribbons in order to increase the power output of the solar module. This also enables our customers to increase the power output by 2.5 to 2.8%. Overall I have to say that customers using teamtechnik stringers are ready for the futurebecause they produce with a flexible and upgradeable System.

EQ: What the expectations from the Government to boost manufacturing in IndiaKramer: It was a wise decision by the Indian government to set a target of installed PV capacity of 100 GW by 2022. You always need an ambitious target. At the same time you will provide a certain security to local companies that they can sell their local manufactured solar modules in India. Supporting the local companies with either a higher feed-in tariff for local manufactured solar modules, investment support such as financing support or support for setting up a new factory, will lead to a bigger solar module manufacturing base in India.


EQ: Please present some examples of your equipment & technologies in India and worldwide and their performanceKramer: One example, Vikram Solar, Indian manufacturer of photovoltaic systems, has decided to work with teamtechnik to expand its production to manufacture enough solar modules to generate 2 GW, up from 500 MW. teamtechnik has been given the job of developing and constructing production lines for producing these solar modules. For Vikram Solar, teamtechnik's worldwide service network was a decisive factor in choosing the company, alongside the technical benefits of teamtechnik's stringer and layup solutions. At Vikram, for example, it was important to integrate the relatively novel, but highly effective PERC cells and bifacial cells in the production process. It was no problem for us. Another example is Renewsys. This company has purchased from us 2 x TT2100 Stringer Systems. Last year we have supplied our TT4200GIGA Stringer to Renewsys increasing the module production capacity from 130 MWp to 260 MWp. See also question14.

EQ: What is the future of solar manufacturing technologiesKramer: We are currently seeing a trend towards 5 busbars. By increasing the number of busbars the resistance losses can be reduced. Based on our research and development work with the SERIS Institute at the University in Singapore we know that the maximum number of busbars will be 6. You can of course increase the number of busbars further, but based on the simulation performed by the SERIS Institute the power gain achieved after 6 busbars is only minimal.

EQ: India currently has around 2 GW Cell Manufacturing and 8GW of Module Manufacturing…..what is the opportunities, challenges in manufacturing in IndiaKramer: India is expanding their manufacturing base. It is the correct decision of the government in India to support local manufacturing. Only with a local manufacturing base the solar energy can be more widespread in India because more and more people are supporting it. Our customers are facing several challenges. One is the availability of raw materials and local manufactured solar cells. In addition financing the equipment is a challenge.

EQ: Enlighten with some new orders in hand, its timelinesKramer: Due to teamtechnik’s proven high technology standard RenewSys has once again decided for stringers from teamtechnik and by placing a considerable order for teamtechnik stringers TT 2100 they are successfully continuing to increase their production capacities.

EQ: What are the various inspection, testing, verification, assurance technologies to ensure high quality manufacturing and various certification requirementsKramer: teamtechnik is certified according to ISO 9001:2008. At our factory our processes and our incoming materials will be inspected and we ensure that only good components are used within our machines and systems. Every stringer system is tested first internally and then together with our customers to ensure that exact the material which shall be produced at a later time is working with the correct machine settings. Together with our customers we perform peel-force tests, EL tests of the produced strings as well as measurements of throughput and dimensions to verify the correct and exact configuration and settings. During the manufacturing process at our customers each incoming cell is inspected by a camera system and the dimensions, busbar position, grid completeness and many more items are checked. During the soldering process we measure the temperature of each cell and we adjust the power output of our Infrared Light Soldering Module to ensure each cell is processed with the same temperature achieving the same good soldering result. After the installation of our machines we train our customer’s operators and maintenance personnel. This will enable our customers to run with a high uptime and a high yield.

EQ: What is the key competitive advantages for your customers who choose to buy your equipment and technology Kramer: In one statement: Extremely high output of 130 MWp on just 15 m². The Stringer TT4200 Giga is the most compact, yet fastest, stringer system in the world. Customers are confirming availabilities of over 98% for all of our systems. teamtechnik stringers have a flexible machine architecture and therefore they are always upgradable for future cell or ribbon technologies. Most of our stringers use contact-free infrared soldering technology which makes the hight system output possible while minimizing the breakage rate.

EQ: India is currently ramping up manufacturing capacities…how much capacity addition do you forecast ? Kramer: Forecasting is always difficult. But personally I see a big potential in India. Solar Energy can be installed within a short period of time. The costs for solar modules have been reduced over the last few years a lot and therefore solar energy is competitive with fossil fuels. India is one of the fastest growing economies and a lot of additional energy will be required in the next few years. Solar will be able to provide clean energy to the big cities in India as well as to rural areas. So I personally hope that more solar energy will be added in order to keep the air clean or cleaner in India. The existing companies in India will expand their manufacturing capacities and new players will enter the market. On the solar module manufacturing side I see a potential of 10 GW to 15 GW of production capacity within the next few years in India.

INTERVIEW


FEATURED

Source: energy.economictimes.indiatimes

How India can use Information Technology for

Enhanced interaction between data-science based IT systems and the electricity delivery systems will revolutionize the delivery of services.

As a general purpose technology (GPT), electricity has embodied our definition of improved quality of life. Access to electricity service is now regarded as a basic necessity. In India, the government has taken up access to electricity as an utmost priority. Two of government’s flag-ship programs — Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana and the Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijli Har Ghar Yojana or Saubhagya Scheme — are harnessing both central grid and decentralized or off-grid based approaches for providing electricity access across all villages and to all households, respectively. In the current paradigm, India has earned the reputation of being one of the top performers in terms of the growth in electricity access, in recent years.

T his progress builds on the mark of a new dawn initiated with the introduc-tion of the Electricity Act 2003, which mandated the supply of electricity to all areas, irrespective of whether it is an urban or a rural area. Also, the Act provided for the participation of private players and delicensed gen-eration and distribution of electricity in rural areas. This led to sprouting of social enterprises in the electricity access space. This development further sparked innovation. At present, information technology (IT) based solutions such as smart meters for renewable energy-based micro and mini grids and pay-as-you-go systems are well established solutions. Yet, there is a lot that can be harnessed.

The ongoing electricity access schemes of the government have successfully deployed the electricity distribution and transmission infrastructure across majority of the Census villages. At this juncture, cumulatively, the distribution companies have a much larger number of villages and house-holds drawing their services, than ever. Given the fact that there are huge territories to serve, one can think of it as a challenge. Nevertheless, familiarity with modern IT solu-tions can enable translation of underlying challenges into opportunities.

Universal Electricity Access

For example, humongous amount of data generated on a regular basis can be leveraged by the distribu-tion companies, using big data analytics, to derive insights about payments, and demand patterns.

Similarly, for delivery of services such as bill collection in remote and rural areas, the introduction of scratch cards through mobile phone retailers will potentially enhance the collection efficiency and also reduce associated costs. Additionally, predictive analytics-based solutions can be harnessed by distribution companies to plan for preventive maintenance of the infrastructure. In the insurance sector, the capability of drones is already being harnessed and the same can be replicated by utilities for monitoring of supply lines in rural and remote areas. In recent years, the growing popularity of blockchain technology has gained

interest of innovators in the electricity space. There are also a growing number of start-ups that have developed blockchain-based technology solutions to foster small ticket energy trading among individual owners of decentralized solar systems.

Disruption in the electricity access space is inevitable. The future electricity service delivery systems will not be constrained by the debates of early years – centralized or decentralized systems, and coal based power or renewable energy based generation. Businesses will compete in terms of the cost of service delivery and quality of service. En-hanced interaction between data-science based IT systems and the electricity delivery systems will revolutionize the delivery of services. Also, the juxtaposing of modern IT sys-tems will set reporting on actual service delivery, a reality.


TECHNOLOGY

Growatt smart new inverter solutions impress visitors at Intersolar 2018Messe München exhibition center, Germany: Intersolar Europe 2018, as a global leading PV inverter manufacturer, Growatt New Energy Technology CO.,LTD (Growatt) continues the worldwide display of its powerful inverter ranges MAX 50K-80KTL3 LV, Growatt SPH/SPA/SPF, Growatt 2500-6000 TL-X, AC EV charger, etc.

According to IHS Markit analysis, there is expected double-digit growth in the European PV market in 2018. Solar demand in Europe will rise to about 11 GW in 2018. The five largest European PV markets are Turkey, Germany,

France, the Netherlands and the UK. Growatt insists on an innovation driven strategy, focusing on penetration of research and development in European market for more than 7 years.

Participating in Intersolar is one of Growatt’s overseas market-ing strategies. Those new inverters including home energy storage in-verter series SPH/SPA/SPF, new residential inverter Growatt 2500-6000 TL-X series, smart commercial inverters MAX 50-80KTL3-LV/MV series and EVA AC EV charger have impressed many visitors and customers. The new models incorporate features which go far beyond those associated with traditional inverters, including integra-tion with smart technology.

[Home Energy Storage Inverter series SPH/SPA/SPF] SPH and SPF series maximize self-consumption and reduce electricity bill through the control of charge and discharge of energy storage batteries and utilization of price difference in peak-to-valley electricity. SPH series can also inte-grate IoT technology to realize intelligent management of home solar power generation, storage and electricity consumption, thus build a complete smart home energy management system. While the SPA series can retrofit existing PV systems to storage systems to increase self-consumption, reduce electric-ity bills. During grid power outage, SPA series can even provide emergency power back up.

(New Residential inverter)Growatt 2500-6000 TL-X series are more power-ful on the performance with 1.4 times DC over-load and 1.1 times AC overload,12.5A string current design perfectly matching bi-facial module, with excellent perfor-mance the inverter can increase up to 10% energy generation, it is also with very elegant new look, and OLED display which makes it more like a home appli-ance


TECHNOLOGY

(Smart commercial inverters)MAX 50-80KTL3-LV/MV series are equipped with 6 MPPTs, more flexible string configuration and less string mis-match loss. The Anti-PID function auto-matically heals PV module at night and increases long term profit of solar power plant. In addition, MAX 50-80KTL3-LV/MV series provide 24*7 reactive power compensation and increase transformer loading capability, thus save investment. Moreover, the inverter is with excellent capability to handle harsh grid environment which improves inverter reliability and ensures high generation.

(AC EV charger)“PV + energy storage + EV charger” will form a multi-source-complementary micro-grid system that can realize photo-voltaic self-consumption, spare electricity storage and meanwhile provide green energy to electric vehicles. EVA AC EV charger is easy to use and efficient. The human-machine-interface provides smart charger management. Output power can be automatically adjusted but also man-ageable remotely with WIFI or 4G, pro-tocol complies with European OCPP v1.6 standards. In terms of protection, EVA AC EV charger has IP65 protection level, comprehensive electrical and temperature protection, support harsh environment application. Installation of the charger is also flexible with both pole-mounting or wall-mounting options.

Top Brand PV Netherlands 2018 awarded by CEO of EuPD

Thanks to our customers who trust us and choose our inverters for their solar projects. Growatt is now TOP 2 residential invert-er supplier in Netherland. With the significant achievements, Growatt has received the award of ‘Top PV brand Netherlands 2018’ from EuPD. Markus A.W. Hoehner, CEO of EuPD Research presented the award to Growatt at Intersolar 2018 on June 20.

“During these years, we have offered much support world-wide. We provide many power-ful solar inverters in the PV market with smart solutions and nice service offerings, we are grateful to our customers who chose our inverters for their projects. We will continue to demonstrate our maturity in intelligent technology and offer comprehensive range of service to meet the world-class standards.” Said David Ding, CEO of Growatt.

The global PV market trend in 2018 pushes Growatt to develop and produce more powerful, safer and more efficient new inverters for customers. Dedica-tion to the research of smart energy solutions and supply of smart energy products is always Growatt ’s pursuit !


FEATURED

What Financiers Need to Unlock $1 Trillion in Renewable Energy Investment

Financial institutions say they could double their planned investments in the U.S. renew-able energy sector.

By : Greentechmedia


FEATURED

THE LONGER-TERM OUTLOOK IS A LITTLE LESS SUNNY — UNLESS POLICY AND MARKET STRUCTURES SHIF.Under the right conditions, financial institu-

tions say they could double their planned investments in the U.S. renewable energy

sector, with the potential to mobilize $1 trillion in cumulative private capital by 2030.

In a business-as-usual case, investor confidence in the U.S. renewables market is expected to remain high over the next three years, according

to a new survey by the American Council on Renew-able Energy (ACORE). Looking further out, growth will depend on getting a strong set of policies and market signals in place.

The survey, which took place in April 2018, collected data and insights from senior-level respondents across banking institutions, asset

managers, private equity firms and other financial firms that together represent around $15 billion in annual U.S. renewable energy investment.

Two-thirds of respondents said they plan to in-crease their investments in U.S. renewables by more than 5 percent in 2018 compared with

2017, and half plan to increase their investments by more than 10 percent. None said they plan to decrease renewable energy investment by any more than 5 percent.

More than half of respondents, 58 percent, identified the lack of a federal policy driver after the sunset of the wind Production Tax Credit and solar Investment Tax Credit as a hurdle for continued renewable energy growth.

ACORE launched a new initiative this week that aims to boost new private-sector investment in renewables and enabling grid technologies to $1 trillion between 2018 and 2030. To reach that goal, ACORE released a set of proposed policy re-forms and market drivers deemed essential to driving growth.

According to John Eber, adviser to the $1T 2030 campaign and former managing director and head of energy investments at JP Morgan, policy and market reforms are the investment com-munity’s top priority.

“From an investor’s per-spective, I’d argue that the current commercial renewable energy technologies are al-ready performing very well, and we are happy to continue our investments there,” Eber wrote in an email. “Further innova-tion and related cost reductions will help, but that next level of growth really comes down to policy and market reforms.”

“I’ve been in this business for over 15 years, and every time I turn around, more and more investors want to get into re-newables,” he continued. “The capital available is significant, and it will continue to grow each year if we find ways to elimi-nate the barriers to development, improve our transmission system and build on renewable portfolio standards.”

“We’re looking at a world where in the early 2020s, business-as-usual projec-tions have the renewable sector’s growth rate dipping dramatically,” said Gregory Wetstone, ACORE President and CEO, in

an interview. “At that point we’re in a world where there are no federal tax incentives of any kind, and vir-tually every other sector has per-manent…tax incentives baked into the code. Dealing with that is an important part of getting to higher investment numbers.”


ACORE’s specific set of policy changes include:

• A long-term federal policy commitment to support carbon-free electricity generation. According to Wetstone, this commitment could take different forms. A price on carbon is one option; a technology-neutral tax credit is another.

• Federal, state and regional policies to promote mod-ernization of the nation’s electrical grid, including fair access for renewables in electricity markets, and new incentives for energy stor-age and other grid technolo-gies.

• Increasingly ambitious state renewable portfolio stan-dards.

• Streamlined siting and per-mitting processes for renew-able energy and transmis-sion projects. Market drivers include:

• New business models and improved economics to scale up the energy storage market.

• Increased corporate renew-able purchasing through diversified procurement op-tions and new market incen-tives for middle market and industrial companies.

• Increased public awareness and support for renewable energy and electric vehicles.

• Continued financial innova-tion as capital stacks evolve to replace tax equity as a key source of project financ-ing, and as the industry seeks a more standardized approach to finance new project offerings.

Under the right set of circum-stances, a majority of investors that took ACORE’s survey, 89 percent, said they would double their compa-nies’ cumulative investments over the period 2018-2030.Seventy percent of respondents projected that cumulative private investment in U.S. renewable energy would reach $500 billion over the same period, while 26 percent projected it would reach $1 trillion.

“We think it is really important to provide the opportunity for the U.S. to take full advantage of the tremendous growth and economic opportunity in the renewables sec-

tor, to keep building on the momen-tum that we have, and to stay within striking distance of U.S. climate objectives [under the Paris Agree-ment],” said Wetstone.

He acknowledged some of the policy and market reforms will be more attainable than others. Increa sed state renewable energy goals, for instance, have become a promis-ing policy driver, particularly in the absence of federal leadership. Ninety-five percent of survey takers said expanded state renewable energy portfolio standards are important or very important growth policies.

Achieving a federal policy commit-ment to support carbon-free electricity generation is likely to be harder — but despite that, efforts to advance a price on carbon are already underway. Eber underscored that an effort to address the carbon externality is “essential” to driving meeting ACORE’s $1T by 2030 investment goal.

“At this point it’s premature to proj-ect which specific carbon price or regu-latory mechanism will be most viable, but what is clear that the societal costs of greenhouse emissions will need to be addressed in one fashion or another in the early part of the next decade,” he said. “Market-oriented approaches appear to offer the most efficient mech-anisms — and have potential to boost our economy, increase employment, and enhance U.S. competitiveness in the booming global marketplace for renewable energy.”

Wetstone said he’s optimistic the investment community can build sup-port at the federal level over the next few years.

“It’s easy to overlook the reality of investment in renewable energy has been the No. 1 source of private-sector infrastructure investment in the U.S. for each of the past seven years,” he said. “So what we’re really talking about is continuing that momentum and con-tinuing that growth and being able to take advantage of all the benefits that brings with it from an economic per-spective, an investment perspective, and a jobs perspective.”

“A lot of this growth is in red areas of the country, rural areas where there aren’t a lot of other…opportunities,” Wetstone added. “So I think we have a history of bipartisan support, and we’re determined to maintain and build on that.”

Source: greentechmedia

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June 4-6, 2019

◎Asian Photovoltaic Industry Association / Shanghai New Energy Industry Association ◎Show Management: Follow Me Int'l Exhibition (Shanghai), Inc. Add：Room 902, Building No. 1, 2020 West Zhongshan Road, Shanghai 200235, China Tel：+86-21-33561099 / 33561095 / 33561096 Fax：+86-21-33561089◎For exhibition: [email protected] For conference: [email protected]

13th (2019) International Photovoltaic Power Generationand Smart Energy Exhibition & Conference


TEPSOL(Think Energy) Takes A Giant Step And Is building Over 100 Rooftop Projects For Government Clients

ndia is positioned to be at the forefront of the global effort to make the transition to a low-carbon economy. However, the road to this transition is no less challeng-ing. While the installed capacity of solar power in India has reached ~22 GW, the contribution from rooftop projects remains at ~1.2 GW. The Government of India understands the importance of rooftop solar and continues to support rooftop projects through various policies and incentives.

TEPSOL Projects Private Limited (“TEPSOL”), a joint venture between Think Energy and EverStream Capital, is committed to contribute to India’s quest for energy security through generation of on-site

electricity through solar rooftop installations. TEPSOL is currently developing and building over 15,000kW of rooftop solar photo-voltaic projects over 100 sites, spread across the three states of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. These projects have been secured under Solar Energy Corporation of India's (“SECI”) Renewable Energy Services Company (RESCO) scheme for government buildings and shall be com-missioned by October 2018. RESCO projects entail zero capex from the users and is basically a pay per use model. These projects intend to reduce the carbon footprint of and deliver economic benefits to, the Government Departments.

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Distributed Solar


The rooftop portfolio in-cludes a 242 kW rooftop solar project at the temple

of Srisailam Devasthanam, which is located in the state of Andhra Pradesh, and is home to one of the 12 Jyotirlingas in the country. The energy charges that the Srisailam Devasthanam administration would be paying has been competitively deter-mined at Rs 3.939 per unit- flat for 25 years. Apart from deliver-ing economic benefits, a project of this kind would help Srisailam-Devasthanam administration, reduce its carbon footprint by displacing 360 tonnes of GHG (Green House Gases). Install-ing a 242kWp SPV system is equivalent to planting 17,000 mature trees and illuminating over 475 homes.

When contacted by EQ, Mr.Ravishankar Tumuluri, Managing Director, TEPSOL, said "The initiatives taken by Government to promote rooftop solar projects is com-mendable. We are pleased to partner with government institutions and central/state departments to deliver energy cost savings and reducing their carbon footprint”

Mr. Sandip Agarwal, Director, TEPSOL,said “We are cur-rently building this 15 MW rooftop portfolio under the SECI scheme and intend to complete the projects before October, 2018. We shall continue to grow in terms of capability and deployment of rooftop solutions and work on innovative technologies to sup-port the Industry.

Mr Paul Huelskamp, Director, TEPSOL, and a representative of EverStreamCapital stated that “EverStream Capital is committed to contribute to promoting clean energy in India. Having invested across geog-raphies, we are of the view that India is one of most attractive markets given the policy support and vision of the Government. We are excited of our partnership with Think and intend to build a strong portfolio going forward"

Distributed Solar


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If we are not Competitive in solar manufacturing, We should not Attempt it: Amitabh Kant

“You may be competitive in hundred other things but if you are not competitive in solar manufacturing right till the back-end, do not attempt that, and rather get into an area where you will be glob-ally competitive,” NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said.

Kant shared a perspective on India’s energy sector and the larger economic scenario at an industry event.


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Power generation will be driven by renewable energy by 2050. What is your view on the stra-tegic transformation that is taking place both in the world of energy and mobility?

India has the lowest cost of solar and wind in the world but we are hugely reliant on coal. Much of the debate in the last five years has been on coal short-age. what is going to be the way in which India will move away from coal?

What is being done to boost domestic solar manufacturing capabilities. Most of the domestic players especially the solar players are into assembling.

This government has been extremely supportive of renewables in terms of policy framework. What are the major challenges for growth of solar and wind energy in India?

Whether it is going to be coal or renewables is going to be a function of the market. It is going to be func-tion of economics as we go on bidding for renew-able power. If the cost of renewables falls sharply, the country is going to shift towards renewables, whether we have a huge amount of coal or not is not an issue. The issue is, how sharply the cost of renewables falls. The critical issue across mobility and energy is energy storage and grid manage-ment. A critical issue will be grid management and our ability to make a quantum technological leap forward and that is really the future of both mobility and energy – to have storage batteries.

The issue about coal and renewable and the issue about EV versus combustion vehicles is not really something which you and I will determine. It will be an issue which will determined by innovation and our ability to make prices fall in renewables and also the ability to make the cost of EV fall very rapidly. The day that happens you and I will switch over to EV. I am totally against a policy where you drive EV thorough large scale subsidies, that is not sustainable.

M y view is that increasingly India should do large-scale bidding of solar linked to storage batteries. The future lies in storage batteries. It is not about just creating renewable power. It is also about creating the grid to manage fluctuations. Solar has huge fluctuations and, therefore, you need to create the grid to back that up. You need to link solar to storage batteries. That is the future and that is the technological leap which India needs to take.

I am not a great believer in protectionism. I am a believer in globalisation and a believer in India being an integral part of the global supply chain. Either you are competitive or not competitive. If you are not competitive, do not try and manufacture something (in an area) where you are not going to be competitive. You may be competitive in hundred other things but if you are not competitive in solar manufacturing with the entire back-end, right till the back-end, do not at-tempt that, and rather get into an area where you will be globally competitive. And if you want to be competitive then make sure that you do it in size and scale. If you miss that then get into an area where you can be a global champion, like we are in compact car manufacturing. You need not necessarily be a global champion in every area of manufacturing.

et me give you an Indian perspec-tive because automobile and auto components play a very critical part in India’s manufacturing. They play a very critical role in job creation. The segment contributes almost 7.2 per cent of India’s GDP. So, it is very important to first understand that as we move from combustion vehicles to Electric Vehicles, we need to ensure that this shift has long-term predictability and consis-tency in policy.

We are a centre for compact car manufacturing and we create over 35 lakh jobs from this sector. We need to ensure that this manufac-turing and these jobs do not get impacted in any manner in that shift. It is important to understand that it is going to be a gradual shift over a period of time. It has to be a gradual shift because the cost of EV as of now is still very high and it will only be by 2026 that the cost of EV will be at par with combustion vehicles, which will be significantly determined by the cost of the bat-tery and which, to my mind, will be a period of another 5-6 years. In-dia’s advantage is that the number of persons owning cars is just 20 per 1,000 as compared to say 900 per 1,000 in the US or 860 odd per 1,000 in Europe and therefore India has a huge advantage of shifting towards EV. There is no lock-in cost right now and as we move in, we will be able to make an incremental shift towards EV.

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Are you suggesting that we need to be investing more or are you expecting Indian companies to invest in technology?

Taking the point of environmental sustainability as a pitch, what can state governments do on public trans-port options?

Battery costs have dropped by 80 per cent since 2010. What needs to be done to increase the domestic manu-facturing capability?

Should the government incentivize R&D in these areas for the big as well as small players as a policy?

Renewable energy needs grid access and grid being a regulatory area, what can change in the regulator environment to make it more condu-cive for business and accelerate the adoption of renewables?

On one hand we have stressed assets, bad loans, fuel shortage and the NPA issue in the power sector and on the other hand we have excitement and new innovation with solar and wind tariffs falling. Where do you see power generation in the next five years? Is this headed towards a resolution of some form? Will technol-ogy aid in the resolution process?

I expect the government to be facilitator, a catalyst, to create an ecosystem for private sector investors to come in. It is not the government which drives innovation. The government becomes a catalyst for greater amount of innovation and disruption to take place and therefore structuring of bids should be based in a manner where it should be able to drive many of these changes.

E very state across India should push for public trans-port through EVs and they do not need to do it by out-right purchases of vehicles but they need to do it on contract basis. The contract should be so structured that it should be on a per kilometre basis. In NITI Aayog we are structuring a contract on that basis, which will be made available to all the states so that all the states can go without ownership basis, but on a per kilometre basis. And I think every municipality should go for Electric buses.

F irstly, our policy needs to be based on shared, con-nected and zero emission future. That is where we should eventually focus on. It is not going to happen overnight. That would really require costs to fall on the battery side. So, there are two challenges. One is on the innovation side and the other is on the avail-ability of cobalt, nickel and lithium across the world. Also, we need the ability to break away from lithium and get into new areas where you can drive EV with batteries made out of different materials. There are a vast number of start-ups who are doing work in these areas. In 3-4 years, we will have a completely new alternative technology. So, these are areas of huge disruption and India should allow many disruptions to take place.

W e have seen a lot of unique start-ups which are do-ing work in many of these areas, especially towards public transportation. There are a number of start-ups which are working on public transportation and swap-ping in three-wheelers. I think our policy should be geared towards two-wheelers, three-wheelers and public transportation. You have an example of Am-pere in Bangalore where IIT graduates from Chennai have brought out an electric smart scooter which has the potential of being the Tesla of the scooter world. You have Sun Mobility working on swapping of ve-hicles for public transportation. A number of start-ups and entrepreneurs are working in these areas and I am sure many of them will succeed.

A big challenge lies on the distribution side as many of the DISCOMS do a lot of cross-subsidization. They must realize that electricity should be run like great business. DISCOMS should be commercially viable, profitable and in the long run India will gain if DISCOMS across the states do good business and are completely de-politicised. I think there is a dire need for a national DISCOM company. India needs to push for a national DISCOM company as we have a national grid company. In the power grid sector we need to bring in private players and allow competition to take place on the grid side. The private sector will bring in good technology. My belief is that in the long-run great things happen when we develop a policy for private sector to come in and do work.

O ne of the biggest things done in India is the structural reforms of GST, NCLT, IBC and that really shows that crony capitalism in India is dead now. You have seen huge examples of complete take-over by NCLT process by other companies and therefore private busi-nesses will be much more disciplined. If you do not pay up the banks you will lose your business. Why have assets on the steel side succeeded? We have many buyers for steel companies. Why has that happened? It is be-cause we were able to create an ecosystem of steel demand in India, despite a huge amount of imports from China. We were able to control the flow of steel from China. Steel demand has never been better in India then now. You have created a demand for many buyers to come in and that demand was created by the government through its policy framework. In the power sector too we need to do the same thing. We need to create demand for power. In the power sector, we need to take very strong decisions. We need to clean up the cities to get rid of petcoke, furnace oil, coke and a vast number of dirty fuels which are being used in India. On the environmental side, India needs to be very tough. We cannot afford to have 14 of our cities as the worst in the world.

Source: energy.economictimes.indiatimes


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SAFEGUARD DUTY

Govt should exempt solar units under SEZ from safeguard dutyIn 1995, India became a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) incurring obligations to provide market access to goods from other countries. The initial phase of trade liberalisation led to a sudden increase of imports in countries which lacked competi-tive manufacturing facilities. However, gradually many countries developed indigenous manufacturing capaci-ties and global trade achieved partial equilibrium.

Having said that, it is an economic reality that exports of goods into the markets of some countries cause “injury” to the domestic producers of importing countries. The WTO

framework provides for various remedies such as anti-dumping and safeguard measures to tackle such situations.

In 2005, India created Special Economic Zones (SEZs) to facilitate manufacturing in India at competi-tive prices. SEZs were provided benefits such as single window clearance and tax holidays. SEZ units are considered to be outside Indian customs territories and goods manufactured in these units, if sold in India (DTA), attract import duties including anti-dumping and safeguard duty, as applicable on goods imported into India from other countries. While imposition of safeguard duty provides protection to domestic producers, it results in a counterproductive outcome for units located in SEZs and catering to domestic demands, as the domestic removals from such units are charged to safeguard duty.

The purpose of imposing safeguard duty is to protect domestic producers from competition offered by import-ed goods and to provide them time to become competitive. The Indian solar industry is witnessing a peculiar situa-tion. Today, India has 3.1 GW of installed capacity of Solar cells out of which 2 GW, i.e. more than 60% is situated in SEZs and out of 8.3 GW of solar module manufacturing facilities, 3.8 GW are situated in SEZs. Thus a substantial production capacity is situ-ated in SEZs which caters to and is contributing to the ambitious plan of the govern-ment to attain a target of 100 GW of solar power by 2022. Imposing safeguard duties, which would also ap-ply to manufacturers based in SEZ units, would thus be counter-productive and will lead to increase in cost of power without any gain to the domestic manufacturing industry. This goes against

the theme and sentiment of Make in India Policy and is in contradiction of achieving the energy security.

The government can handle this situation by either specifically exempting SEZ units from payment of safeguard duty, as suggested by the DG (safeguards) in the preliminary findings, “The remedy to this could be a duty exemption to the extent of the Safeguard measure when the PUC is cleared by a SEZ unit into the domestic market…”. Alternatively, the government can apply a Tariff Rate Quota (TRQ) regime, under which a certain quantity is exempted from payment of safeguard duty on importation and imports over and above this quota are charged to safeguard duty. A substantial part of this quota would need to be allocated to the SEZ units in India to take care of the peculiar Indian situation.

This would not only provide protection to the domestic producers in the SEZs but also outside it and would also help the government to attain the target of 100 GW of solar power by 2022. }} The writer is ex DG

SafeguardsGovernment of India.


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Analysis Of 1 Year’s Generation Of 1.1 Mwp Scorpius Tracker Plant In Karnataka

SYNOPSIS OF PLANT

1. Canadian Solar Panels2. ABB PV800 1MW AC Central inverter3. BLOCK Design of 268.8 KWpx2, 282.24 KWpx24. Inter ROW pitch at 5.5 metres, 3.5m clear path

between rows for cleaning5. Loading of 10% on DC6. Grid downtime of 8.8% across the year7. PVSyst indicated a generation yield of 1.91 MU

/ MWp8. Power Evac at 11KVA – Nirantar Jyoti Scheme9. Generation normalized at 1MWp10. Fully Operational Nov 201611. Plant setup under 14 weeks: Civil 4 weeks,

Structures erection plus Module Mounting 8 weeks and Trackers Commissioning 1-2 weeks.

Ritesh PothanSenior VP - Business Development,


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The parameters for the location were based on Meteonorm 6.1 which has ± 9% variation based on site conditions. Due to the unavailability of Fixed / Seasonal tilt data no comparison can be made.

The generation was expected to cross 1.9MU on average over a 10 year time frame.

The below graph shows the superb CUF of the plant, which clearly proves the advantages of track-ers over Fixed Tilt systems, especially where DC loading brings in a lot of value addition in reduc-

ing AC+DC side BOS Costs. The voltage reduction due to horizontal position allows for accommodat-ing more panels per string thus ensuring early wakeup and generation up to late evening.

EXPECTATION FROM PLANT

GENERATION ACHIEVED : 1.942 MW per MWp generated in One Year

Table 1: PVSyst Simulation

ScreenShot 1 : 31% CUF Day


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The ability to deliver consistent power as well as reduce the impact of backdowns with Zero fail-ure rate on tracking components resulted in just 8.9% reduction in power delivered compared to

Fixed Tilt or Seasonal for which impact would be much more severe. Please refer to Screenshot 2

Screenshot 2: Grid downtime has lowered effect in SAT, whereas FT/Seasonal Tilt would generate almost zero

The generation of the plant has seen the following1. Highest generation from Feb to May2. Consistent delivery during summer months3. CUF above 20% >57%4. Average CUF across the year of ~21%


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The benefits of trackers increases significantly when closer to the equatorial line and in a good DNI environment.

Trackers provide steady and continuous power throughout the day enabling maximum solar radiation capture. This translates into clean, efficient and dependable power to run commercial, industrial and day based activities without encountering the need for storage thus enabling a better, pollution free nation.

The limitations of fixed tilt are highlighted below in the graphs which provide a glimpse of the benefits that Scorpius Trackers brings to the table.

Below, you can see a sample extract of daily power generation curves for a site using Meteonorm 6.1values

January

April

Table 2: Monthly CUF


June

August

October

Throughout the year, the power generation and performance is far more robust using Scorpius Tracker Technology, which leaves little to chance with the possibility of an upside unlike older

outdated technology.

Key features for Scorpius Single Axis Trackers are

1. Earlier in day + Smoother Generation Curve, sufficient for commercial, industrial and day loads

2. Higher Inverter Efficiency due to lower overloading requirement, Reduced Cooling needs for Inverters due to less need for oversizing

3. Maximum generation vs Fixed Tilt4. Structures stability at high wind speeds of 115 mph

validated using Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel Testing

5. Higher DC Overloading Capacity compared to Seasonal and Fixed Tilt Structures

6. Zero Solar PV cell cracking issues, unlike Sea-sonal Tilt movement mechanisms

7. Optimized Grid Efficiency + Utilization8. Minimal Grid back down effect vs Fixed Tilt9. Reduced O&M due to lesser panel cleaning

needs, Bushing Mechanical Life of 150 years10. Agricultural ground use possible

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sCorpius has high performing proven array traCker design ( 2014 )

sCorpius also has a best in Class 'row' traCker (2017)


Techno-Economic Analysis of Stand-alone Solar PV and Battery based Micro-grids in KarnatakaElectrical energy can transform and uplift the socio-economic condition of a region—this is a

well-established fact (Jain et al., 2015). By November 2017, India’s Grameen Vidyutikaran (GARV) dashboard indicated that 82% of the targeted village electrification work had been achieved

(Rural Electrification Corporation, 2017). In April 2018, the Government of India released a statement to announce that 100 % electrification had been achieved for India. However, this translates to about 3.1 crore households still waiting for electricity connections, indicating a long road ahead for the country in achieving 100% electrification1. A large section of the population continues to live in areas that receive deficient supply—no more than an average of 6 hours a day.

Technical Article

AUTHOR:

Vaishalee Dash

Badri S. Rao

Harshid Sridhar

Dr. Mridula

D. Bharadwaj


The system configuration for the analy-sis (Figure 1) considers solar PV as the main source of power for the load demand. The PV power is prioritised to supply the load first, before charging the battery during excess generation. During periods of no solar generation or high demand, the battery discharges to meet the load.

The solar PV system, along with a battery, is connected to the Direct Cur-rent (DC) side of the inverter. A Maxi-mum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) charge controller charges the battery and ensures that the battery charg-

ing power and bus voltage are within specified limits. The inverter converts DC solar power into Alternating Current (AC), to supply the load directly.

Similarly, the battery power, during discharge, is routed through the invert-er for AC conversion. A few manufac-turers embed the MPPT feature in the inverter. Although we have considered both DC/DC and DC/AC conversion efficiencies for conservative power calculations, we have only assumed a single cost for the charge controller and inverter set in the financial calcula-tions.

The system configuration for the analysis (Figure 1) considers solar PV as the main source of power for the load demand. The PV power is prioritised to supply the load first, before charging the battery during excess generation. During periods of no solar gener-ation or high demand, the battery discharges to meet the load.

Since a SPVMG is well-suited for un-electrified sites, an important pre-requisite for the study was to identify un-electrified villages in KA. We used information available on the GARV dashboard for initially screen-ing potential sites. The dashboard provides details of electrification based on grid extension or off-grid plans.

According to the data available on the dashboard in May 2016, 28–30 villages in Hassan, Shimoga and Chamarajanagar districts fell within the scope of this project. Since the study involved modelling of solar PV characteristics to estimate genera-tion, access to good-quality ground solar data was important.

Thus, we had to consider a site’s proximity to SRRA stations set up by NIWE. Sites that were less than 100 km from the periphery of SRRA sta-tions, were first selected. As it turned out, all shortlisted sites satisfying the criteria were in the Chamarajanagar district. Table 1 shows a list of all the shortlisted sites.

• The villages or sites should be un-electrified

• They should have close proximity to Solar Radiation Resource Assess-ment (SRRA)

• ground stations, deployed by the National Institute of Wind Energy (NIWE)

• Real load data from neighbouring sites should be available.

We selected sites for the study based on the criteria mentioned below:

The framework developed for this study identified the appropriate system size. It constituted a set of inputs, dispatch model and outputs in the form of reliability indi-cators. In order to calculate the PV size (𝑃𝑉𝑠) and battery size (𝐵𝐴𝑇𝑠) for the vari-ous dispatch scenarios, we used different combinations of PV and battery capacities, in an iterative manner, as inputs to the PV and battery models. The PV and battery power outputs were subsequently passed to the dispatch model. The dispatch model then calculated reliability indicators such as unmet load (𝑈𝐿), excess electricity (𝐸𝑋𝐸𝐿) and loss of power supply prob-

ability (𝑇𝐿𝑃𝑆𝑃). The load demand profile remained the same for all the simulated scenarios. Figure 2 presents a block sche-matic of the interaction between system inputs and reliability indices for a typical SPVMG dispatch scenario.

For each combination of PV and bat-tery, the system LCOE along with reliabil-ity parameters were recorded. Finally, we sorted the systems based on the lowest LCOE and unmet load (high reliability). Various dispatch scenarios were tested and a “balanced” system, in terms of both cost and reliability, was chosen as the final system configuration.

System Configuration

Methodology for Techno-Economic Analysis of SPVMG

Site Selection

Overview of Methodology

Figure 1 : Block schematic of the SPVMG system configuration

Technical Article


The load demand data is another important input for the model and crucial for site selection. We required load data to perform system sizing and determine the capacity of the potential PV plant, battery and inverter. For un-electrified villages, the demand data are typically generated based on the energy needs of the village. A field survey is conducted by the project developer, at times, to estimate the current and future need for electricity. However, in this study, our aim was to determine the SPVMG size, considering a demand pattern similar to or closely resembling an actual rural demand pattern. The reason behind this was to understand the system capacity requirements for catering to the real rural demand, similar to what the proposed site would see in the future. This is contrary to the approach followed by most microgrid developers today, where the system is typically designed to provide a pre-decided quantum of energy, with limited consideration for future growth in load demand. We approached the Energy De-partment of the Government of Karnataka for consultation regarding demand data. Based on our discussions, we considered the demand data from the 11 kV feeders close to the shortlisted sites as input for the sizing analysis. The 11 kV feeder data represented the aggregated load demand for a cluster of villages. This data-set

from the neighbouring electrified villages provided a realistic estimate of the pattern of electricity consumption in that region, hence we used it in the study. We ob-tained minute resolution data from select feeders through a formal request to the Karnataka State Load Despatch Centre (SLDC). The SLDC data included active power consumption data at a minute-level time scale for the period January–Decem-ber, 2015, for the two feeders closest to the chosen villages. Feeder F2 was the representative feeder for Bedaguli. The other feeder (F6), between Cowdalli sub-station and Male Mahadeswara hills, was representative for the remaining villages, namely Bellaji Beat, Indiganatha A Beat, Indiganatha B Beat and Palar Beat. A visual inspection of the data revealed that for the period under consideration (Janu-ary– December, 2015), the quality of data for feeder F6 was comparatively superior to that of feeder F2. Thus, we found the villages in the Kollegal block of Chama-rajanagar district (represented by feeder F6), i.e., Bellaji Beat, Indiganatha A Beat, Indiganatha B Beat and Palar Beat, to be suitable. However, we finally selected all villages except Bellaji Beat for the study because the solar resource data for these three sites could be mapped from a single SRRA station (Erode), which is located at a distance of approximately 90 km from the sites.

Two crucial inputs, namely load demand data and solar irradiance and weather data, were needed for conduct-ing the analysis. While the first one was needed to help design the SPVMG and de-termine individual component sizes, the second one was needed to model the solar PV power output.

In order to perform a techno-economic modelling of a SPVMG, it was crucial to model the power generation characteristics of the solar PV and battery to determine the power output of the combined system. Once the technical model was built to simulate the generation characteristics, we also prepared a financial mod-el for the micro-grid. Outputs from individual models, when combined, provided insights on the system viability.

We found the demand data from feeder F6 to be the most suitable for the study, as ex-plained in Section 2.2. This data-set had 83,321 zero-value points, out of the total 5,25,600 values, representing minute-level resolution data for one year. These points indicated missing data, and those correspond-ing to load shedding instants. In order to perform a thorough system sizing study, we needed a continuous demand profile. We used a data averaging technique to obtain a continuous demand profile, capturing fluctuations in power, without disturbing the data trends. In addition, we used a scaling approach to determine a representative load profile for the analysis. The scaled-down profile had a peak demand of 14 kW, which is similar to the peak electricity demand seen in typical Indian villages, compris-ing around 120–130 households. The details of the calculation are described in Appendix A.1.

The solar radiation data, procured from NIWE, had close to 42,928 miss-ing data points, out of a total 5,25,600 points, depicting an entire year’s data. We interpolated these data points linearly to form a continuous solar resource profile. This was crucial for performing the siz-ing analysis, where solar generation and demand had to be compared, to deter-mine the contribution of PV and battery in meeting the demand. We identified

the data points, which formed the bound-ary of the bad data subsets, and linearly interpolated them using the two point line equation.

If “t” is the reference minute of a day (1 to 1,440), then “PM (t)” is the correspond-ing module power output for that instant. We used the equation mentioned below to interpolate between (t1, PM1) and (t2, PM2), as the two boundary points of interest:

Inputs for the Analysis

Modelling of SPVMG

Load demand data

Solar radiation data

Technical Article


The PV modelling exercise helped to determine the exact quantum of power generated for an input PV size, based on the site solar resource data. As mentioned in Section 2.2, we mapped the selected villages to a single SRRA station, i.e., Erode in Tamil Nadu. We procured the solar resource data (1 minute resolution) for Erode from NIWE. Table 2 describes the details of the SRRA station and the data availability period (National Institute of Wind En-ergy, 2017).

Solar radiation consists of three com-ponents, Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI), Direct Normal Irradiance (DNI) and Direct Horizontal Irradiance (DHI). The net effective radiation on a tilted solar module is required to calculate the power generated by the PV system, at a site. For this, we first estimated the solar angles and radiation tilt factors (Duffie & Beckman, 2013). The ground-reflected component of radiation is a function of the GHI and albedo factor (ρ) of the surroundings (assumed as 0.2 in this analysis). The effective radiation on the tiled panel can be expressed as:

The performance of solar PV cells is sensitive to not only the incident solar ra-diation, but also the ambient temperature. On the other hand, the temperature of a solar cell (𝑇𝑐𝑒𝑙𝑙 ) is dependent on, both, the ambient temperature and wind speeds, at a site. For this analysis, we considered a multi-crystalline silicon module (glass/cell/polymer sheet type) and a module mount of open rack configuration. We estimated the cell temperatures based on the speci-fications obtained from a referred report (King, Boyson, & Kratochvil, 2004). It can be expressed as:

This section provides an overview of the performance modelling conducted for a lead-acid battery and its dispatch. This exercise helped us assess the battery charging/discharging power, for an instant, based on the modelled PV generation and input load demand data.

The technical model of VRLA Absor-bent Glass Mat (AGM) battery, used in this study, is based on the modelling work done by the System Advisor Model (SAM) of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) (Diorio et al., 2015). We incorporat-ed the concepts of a kinetic battery model to calculate the battery apacity, bound charge, available charge and State of Charge (SoC), for time-series calculations (Manwell & McGowan, 1993). The dynamic voltage model for batteries was used for voltage calculations (Diorio et al., 2015). The life-time estimation of a battery has been calculated based on a simple rain flow counting algorithm (Downing & Socie, 1982; Langella, Testa, & Ventre, 2014).

Where,GT is the net effective solar radiation, inci

dent on a tilted panel (W/m2), Rb is the module tilt factor for the beam

component (DNI) of solar radiation, Rd is the module tilt factor for the diffused

component (DHI) of solar radiation,Rg is the module tilt factor for the GHI of

solar radiation,ρ is the albedo factor of the surrounding

environment.

Where,aCT is the empirically determined coef-

ficient establishing the upper limit for module temperature at low wind speeds and high effective radiation on the panel,

bCT is the empirically determined coef-ficient establishing the rate at which the module temperature drops with an increase in the wind speed, Tamb is the ambient air temperature (°C), WS is the wind speed (m/s),

ΔT is the empirically determined tem-erature difference between the cell and module’s back surface, at Gref = 1,000 W/m2 (°C),

Tcell is the reference temperature (°C), Gref is the reference solar radiation [1,000 W/m2 at Standard Temperature Condi-tions (STC)] (W/m2).

The power generated by a solar PV mod-ule (𝑃𝑀) is computed by accounting for the effects of GT, Tcell, the specified power rating of the module [Pmodule (STC)] and the temperature coefficient of power (KT), for a given module, as specified in the manufacturer’s datasheet. The equation for calculating 𝑃𝑀 has been specified in a referred report (Menicucci & Fernandez, 1988) and represented as:

The power from one module (𝑃𝑀) is then multiplied with the total number of modules in the plant (Npanels_plant) to estimate the DC output of the entire PV plant, denoted as 𝑃𝑝𝑣 . A few additional losses, denoted as (𝑁𝐿), have also been accounted for, as shown in the following equation:

𝐺𝑇 = 𝐷𝑁𝐼 ∗ 𝑅𝑏 + 𝐷𝐻𝐼 ∗ 𝑅𝑑 + 𝐺𝐻𝐼 ∗ 𝜌 ∗ 𝑅𝑔

𝑇𝑐𝑒𝑙𝑙 = 𝐺𝑇 ∗ exp(𝑎𝐶𝑇 + 𝑏𝐶𝑇 ∗ 𝑊𝑆) + 𝑇𝑎𝑚𝑏 + (Δ𝑇) ∗ 𝐺𝑇⁄𝐺𝑟𝑒𝑓

𝑃𝑀 = 𝑃𝑚𝑜𝑑𝑢𝑙𝑒 (𝑆𝑇𝐶) ∗ (𝐺𝑇⁄𝐺𝑟𝑒𝑓) ∗ (1 + 𝐾𝑇 ∗ (𝑇𝑐𝑒𝑙𝑙 − 𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑓))

𝑃𝑝𝑣 = 𝑁𝑝𝑎𝑛𝑒𝑙𝑠_𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑡 ∗ 𝑃𝑀 ∗ (1 − 𝑁𝐿 )

First, we modelled the PV genera-tion profile for 1 kWp capacity, using a 320 Wp polycrystalline module from Vikram Solar as reference, to extract the module parameters (for more details, refer Appendix A.2). We then scaled up this base profile of 1 kW to calculate generation for higher PV capacities. The generation profile from the PV model refers to the Direct Current (DC) output power of the solar PV.

The list below describes the assumptions used in PV modelling:

Solar PV Modelling

Battery Storage Modelling

Overview of lead-acid battery model

• The plant has a fixed tilt configura-tion, with module tilt equal to the latitude of the

• location and orientation facing due south.

• The PV modules operate at maxi-mum power point during sunshine hours, with no

• shading considerations.• An isotropic solar radiation model is

considered.• Additional system losses, which

have been indicated in Table 3.

Technical Article


Figure 3 shows a block schematic overview of the battery model. The model provided outputs at, both, hourly and minute level time scales. The battery electrical model required inputs such as site demand and solar generation data, and user-defined battery capacity and voltage. In addition, it also required battery-chemistry-specific voltage versus Depth of Discharge (DoD) characteris-tics, to model the battery voltage. The battery capacity fade profile was also included in the model to understand the decrease in a battery’s capacity when it is cycled at a certain DoD, and the maximum number of cycles that the battery can provide. The model provided outputs like the number of batteries that should be connected in series and parallel, based on the voltage and current requirement, and the dynamic change in battery current, voltage, power and SoC for the time period considered. In addition, we deter-mined the battery life, in years, based on the cycling that the battery would undergo during dispatch. We plugged this calculated value into the financial model.

Table 4 is a list of the technical specifications considered for the bat-tery model. This includes important parameters like battery bank capacity and battery bank voltage, based on user input; bat-tery cell properties; charge control parameters; and cell capacities at 1 hour, 10 hour and 20 hour rates. We have also included the conversion efficiencies of the inverter (DC to AC) and charge controller (DC to DC) in this Table, since they are intrinsic in the calculation for obtaining the accurate estimation of battery charging/discharg-ing power.

Inputs for the battery model

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We controlled the battery discharging schedules by developing a dispatch strategy. Since the size of a bat-tery depends on its dispatch hours, we chose scenarios, with varying dispatch hours, to evaluate its effect on the battery size. Inputs for the dispatch model included:

Table 5 shows three scenarios, which represent the change in du-ration of hours over which a battery is allowed to dispatch/discharge. For example, in Scenario 1, the battery was allowed to discharge any-time in a day when solar generation is unable to meet the demand. However, in Scenarios 2 and 3, battery discharge was allowed to commence only at a specified “dispatch time”—restricted to a certain number of hours.

To further illustrate the dispatch strategy, in Scenario 1, where the battery is allowed to discharge for 24 hours, we determined the bat-tery power (𝑃𝑏) for time “t”, using the following logic:

The logic described above indicates that in the three scenarios, the PV power output first supplies the load, before charging the bat-tery. Appendix A.3 provides additional details of the lead-acid battery model. We extracted the SoC profile from the battery model to esti-mate the life of the battery. We then filtered the SoC data for a year, into distinct peaks and valleys, as shown in Figure 4, which is known as “filtered SoC” (Langella et al., 2014). Then, we used this filtered SoC as input in the rain flow counting algorithm (Downing & Socie, 1982) for battery life estimation. The filtered SoC helped in generat-ing the number of cycles that elapsed during battery operation and the corresponding DoD. The battery life (𝐿𝑏) was estimated using the equation provided below:

Where, 𝑁𝑖 is the number of cycles, with an average DoD of 𝐷𝑂𝐷𝑖 , and 𝐶𝐹𝑖 is the maximum number of cycles that can be run. When the effective battery capacity degrades to 80% of the initial capacity, the battery is assumed to have reached its end of life (Diorio et al., 2015).

If (𝑃𝑝𝑣 > 𝑃𝑙𝑜𝑎𝑑),𝑃𝑏 = −𝑀𝑖𝑛(|𝑃𝑙𝑜𝑎𝑑 − 𝑃𝑝𝑣 |, | 𝑃𝑏,𝑐,𝑚𝑎𝑥 |) , negative sign indicates charging powerElse,𝑃𝑏 = 𝑀𝑖𝑛(|𝑃𝑙𝑜𝑎𝑑 − 𝑃𝑝𝑣 |, | 𝑃𝑏,𝑑,𝑚𝑎𝑥 |) , positive sign indicates discharging powerHere, 𝑃𝑏,𝑐,𝑚𝑎𝑥 and 𝑃𝑏,𝑑,𝑚𝑎𝑥 were calculated as per the description provided in Section 3.2.2.

Battery dispatch strategy

• Dispatch time, 𝑡 (hour or minute number) • Load demand, 𝑃𝑙𝑜𝑎𝑑• Power output from PV, 𝑃𝑝𝑣• Maximum power to charge the battery, 𝑃𝑏,𝑐,𝑚𝑎𝑥• Maximum power that can be discharged from the

battery, 𝑃𝑏,𝑑,𝑚𝑎𝑥

In this section, we have discussed, in detail, the equa-tions used to design the battery bank configuration for the parameters specified in Table 4 (NREL, 2017).

Design of the battery bank

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In Section 3.2.3, we have explained the dis-patch logic for seamlessly combining the techni-cal outputs from the PV and battery models. In order to complete the technical design of the SPVMG, the inverter has to be sized. We decid-ed the inverter capacity based on the peak load demand for which the system was designed. As the inverter’s output is directly connected to the load, as shown in Figure 1, the maximum power through the inverter, under normal operating con-ditions, will never exceed the peak demand for the site. Considering an additional safety margin of 25% above the peak demand, the inverter ca-pacity, in kW, can be expressed as (Li, Zhu, Cao, Sui, & Hu, 2009):

We developed a financial model to determine the project cost and LCOE. To do so, we considered various fixed and operational costs in-curred by micro-grid developers, under regular operating conditions. LCOE calculations were based on the method of the Central Electricity Regula-tory Commission (CERC), to estimate electricity generation cost from renewable energy (RE) sources (“Draft CERC (Terms And Conditions For Tariff Determination From Renewable Energy Sources) Regulations, 2017 Central Electricity Regulatory Commission New Delhi,” 2017).

The SPVMG component and installation costs shown in Table 6 are based on discussions with the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), a few component suppliers and microgrid developers. The battery and inverter costs are based on prices quoted by MNRE’s empanelled list of equipment manufacturers (MNRE, n.d.).

Two parameters, crucial for understanding the project’s financial details, were the Net Present Value (NPV) of the total system cost, denoted with 𝑁𝑃𝑉𝑠𝑦𝑠, and 𝐿𝐶𝑂𝐸. 𝑁𝑃𝑉𝑠𝑦𝑠 is the sum total of all the costs involved over the project life (𝑃𝐿), converted to present value by discounting the future cash flows by an appropriate discount factor (𝑑). It comprises cost of capital, total project O&M (𝑂&𝑀𝑣𝑎𝑙) and total depreciation (𝐷𝐸𝑃𝑣𝑎𝑙 ). The capital needed for such projects typically consist of debt (𝐷𝑐 ) and equity (𝐸𝑐 ) components. The cost associated with debt is represented as the total interest on term loan (𝐼 𝑁𝑇𝑣𝑎𝑙) and equity fraction is coined as the total return on equity (𝑅𝑂𝐸𝑣𝑎𝑙 ). Thus, 𝑁𝑃𝑉𝑠𝑦𝑠 is represented as:

Appendix A.4 includes details of 𝑁𝑃𝑉𝑠𝑦𝑠 and 𝐿𝐶𝑂𝐸 calculations.

The annual Operation and Maintenance (O&M) cost (𝐶𝑂&𝑀) consists of the cost of employing two personnel to oversee the plant’s O&M, col-lect tariff, maintenance, insurance and land lease costs. Table 7 shows the monthly cost for each of these expenses.

The other parameters considered in the finan-cial model were related to project life, debt andequity considerations, taxes and depreciation.

Since the peak load demand was 14 kW, we calculated the inverter size, in kVA, and rounded it off to be 20 kVA (1.25*14/0.9). We assumed a power factor of 0.9 for the study.

To complete the technical modelling, the reli-ability outputs shown in Figure 2 were calculated. 𝑈𝐿 represents the fraction of load, which cannot be supplied by the SPVMG when the battery reaches 𝑆𝑜𝐶𝑚𝑖𝑛 (lowest allowable SoC) dur-ing discharging. 𝐸𝑋𝐸𝐿 represents the fraction of excess PV generation, which cannot be utilised for charging a battery when it reaches its maxi-mum SoC (𝑆𝑜𝐶𝑚𝑎𝑥). 𝑇𝐿𝑃𝑆𝑃 is the probability of loss of power supply. It indicates the fraction of hours with no supply from either the PV or the battery, out of the total time instants in a year. These in-dicators are expressed below, in detail, for hourly calculations (8,760 is the total number of hours in a typical year):

The technical modelling for Scenario 1 has been mentioned below, as an example. We var-ied the PV size between 25 and 45 kW and the battery size between 50 and 400 kWh to provide several combinations of PV and battery coupling, as inputs to the model. We calculated the values of the reliability indicators from the model and recorded for all possible combinations of PV and battery sizes. A few combinations such as 𝑃𝑉𝑠 = 25 kW, 𝐵𝐴𝑇𝑠 = 50 kWh or 𝑃𝑉𝑠 = 35 kW, 𝐵𝐴𝑇𝑠 = 95 kWh are examples of inputs to the model. The load demand profile was kept constant across all scenarios. We maintained a constant inverter size of 20 kVA for all scenarios, considering it was designed for the input load profile.

Technical Modelling for SPVMG Technical Modelling for SPVMG

Table 8 lists these parameters and their values.

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We combined the capabilities of the technical and financial models with the objective of performing a techno-economic assessment of a SPVMG for a certain input demand profile and location. As shown in Figure 2, we varied the size of PV and battery (𝑃𝑉𝑠 and 𝐵𝐴𝑇𝑠) and used them as inputs to the dispatch model for a fixed load demand. For each combination of PV and battery size, we calculated the three reli-ability parameters from the technical model. We cal-culated the system costs and LCOE from the financial model for the same combination. This process was repeated for each of the three scenarios. We eliminat-ed systems showing greater than 50% unmet demand from the study, since their reliability was not deemed satisfactory. We then arranged the remaining system configurations from the lowest to highest value of LCOE and unmet demand for the three scenarios. Section 4.2 mentions the configurations providing the lowest LCOE and the lowest unmet demand (high reli-ability). Finally, we determined the best system size out of all the possible combinations by balancing cost and reliability.

In this section, we show the results for the per-formance of a typical SPVMG system, simulating its characteristics through our models. We found that the most suitable system configuration can be obtained by a trade-off between cost (LCOE) and system reliability. We found this by calculating both LCOE and unmet load for various combinations of PV and battery size. Since unmet load represents the fraction of demand not served, it is a direct indicator of system reliability.

Prior to describing the techno-economic analysis, we have presented the results associated with the performance of a SPVMG system, in this section. Fig-ure 5 shows a set of six curves related to the hourly system performance, for a typical five-day period, for the year considered.

The results have been shown for a sample system size of PV = 40 KW, Battery = 320 kWh and Inverter =20 kVA, for 24 hours of unrestricted battery dispatch (Scenario 1). The hourly load and solar radiation data are inputs to the model. PV power and battery current [in Amperes

(A)] were calculated from these inputs and deter-mined the charging/discharging of the battery. The current is negative in charging mode and positive in discharging mode. The change in battery voltage [in Volts (V)], which has an inverse trend to current, is also captured in Figure 5. The hourly SoC profile indi-cates the fraction of battery capacity available at any point of time. The SoC increases while charging and decreases during discharging. The power to/from the battery (P to/fr Batt.) indicates the charging/ discharg-ing power and has the same trend as current.

Figure 6 (a) shows the variation in reliability indicators, namely 𝐸𝑋𝐸𝐿 , 𝑈𝐿 and 𝑇𝐿𝑃𝑆𝑃 , for a PV of size 35 kW and different bat-tery capacities. In dispatch Scenario 1, with an increase in battery capacity, 𝐸𝑋𝐸𝐿 , 𝑈𝐿 and 𝑇𝐿𝑃𝑆𝑃 decrease significantly, up to 200 kWh, beyond which the decrease is marginal. A larger battery size, up to around 200 kWh in this case, helps meet the demand satisfactorily and limits the excess electricity. Figure 6 (b) shows the variation in battery life and average efficiency as functions of battery capacity. With an increase in battery capacity, for a fixed PV size, the life of the battery increases significantly, beyond 200 kWh. Batteries of higher sizes remain under-utilised and get cy-cled at low DoDs, which increases its life. The average efficiency of the battery decreases with increase in capacity, as the charging (input) power increases, for the same discharging (output) power, since demand does not change.

Techno-economic Modelling for SPVMG

Results and Discussion

Typical System Performance

Technical Article


Scenarios for Feasibility Analysis

Figure 7 shows the percentage of unmet load for the three dispatch scenarios discussed in Section 3.2.3. We observed that a larger battery size improved its reliability by supplying the majority of the load. However, beyond a certain thresh-old of battery capacity, the fixed PV power (represented by

individual trend lines) does not aid in improving reliability any further. We also saw that with higher PV size, system reli-ability improved in general. Moreover, we also observed that reliability in Scenario 3 was lower as compared to those in Scenarios 1 and 2 due to only 6 hours of battery discharge.

Technical Article


Figure 8 shows the variation in system LCOE corresponding to changes in the system size in all three scenarios. To evaluate systems from a cost perspective, we chose LCOE as it takes into con-sideration the capital, replacement and operational costs involved in setting up a SPVMG. The LCOE trend showed that lower PV and battery sizes reduced the capital expenditure of the system and,

in turn, lowered the LCOEs. However, the battery life increases with battery size (Figure 6, Scenario 2), thus fewer battery replacements are required. Hence, the lower battery replacement cost negates the increase in capital cost in some cases. Thus, the lowest values of LCOE for all three scenarios were found for systems with smaller PV sizes and battery size between 70 kWh and 150 kWh.

The results for Scenario 1 (as is evident from Figures 7 and 8) show that systems with lower PV and battery sizes provide lower LCOEs. However, these smaller capacity systems also have poor reliability (unmet load is typically greater than 30%). Scenarios 2 and 3 also show poor reliability, making

it imperative to find pragmatic solutions and sys-tems that are balanced in terms of cost and reliabil-ity. Table 9 lists the systems with the lowest LCOEs for each of the scenarios. We also evaluated the systems for reliability; those with the lowest unmet load are also listed.

Technical Article


From the results shown above, it is evident that due to the limited number of hours of battery dispatch, the battery size requirement in Scenarios 3 and 2 were lesser than that in Scenario 1. The restriction on dispatch hours reduced the battery discharge time, allowing it to mostly charge from solar. This yielded systems with smaller battery sizes when evaluated for both, the lowest LCOE (due to reduction of expenditure on battery capital cost) and lowest unmet load. Scenario 3 provides a system with the lowest LCOE. However, reduc-tion in the battery size also brings down the system reliability, which is observed as an increase in the percentage of unmet load and 𝑇𝐿𝑃𝑆𝑃 . This is mostly because of the unavailability of enough batterydis-charge power to meet the load.

Similarly, while narrowing down systems based on reliability, we found that Scenario 1 provides the best result as it had the lowest unmet load, indicating higher reliability. This is because the system size combination obtained in this case included large capacities of PV and battery, with 24 hours of battery dispatch allowed, meeting the demand satisfactorily. In Scenario 3, however, the unmet demand was as high as 34% even with 40

kW PV and 200 kWh battery. This was caused due to a limited discharge time of 6 hours only. Thus, a higher battery size would be required to bring down the unmet demand below 34%.

Final “balanced” system configuration results Once we evaluated the systems separately from the cost and reliability perspectives, we decided to select those configurations, which satisfy both these criteria reasonably. In order to do this, we looked at the other reliability indicator, T_LPSP, which shows the hours of power failure in a system for a user-defined combination of PV and battery size. We removed the

systems showing greater than 3.5 hours of power failure in Scenarios 1 and 2. For Scenario 3, however, all the simulated system combina-tions showed more than 5 hours of power failure because of the limited battery discharge period. Thus, we eliminated the systems showing greater than 6 hours of power failure in Scenario 3 and chose a few system combinations with less prob-abilities of power failure. After filtering out the system sizes based on the constraints mentioned above, we sorted the remaining configurations from the smallest to largest LCOE.

Table 10 provides details of the combinations that provide the lowest LCOEs.

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As indicated in Table 10, there is a significant reduction in battery size, from 245 kWh to 150 kWh while comparing Scenario 1 and Scenario 3. This is primarily due to the restricted battery discharge in Scenario 3. This increases the unmet load while lowering the LCOE due to a smaller battery size. We also observed that for Scenario 2, the battery size decreases by only 35 kWh, as compared to that in Scenario 1. The change is not very significant, considering battery discharging is usually limited to the night, on typical sunny days. In this sense, Scenario 2 is not very different from Scenario 1.

The reliability of power supply to load, how-ever, decreases from Scenario 1 to 3 because of a ecrease in system size. In Scenario 3, we notice 6 hours of power failure. Thus, a viable system configuration, which fares well in terms of both cost and reliability, is the one shown in Scenario 2, and is referred to as a “balanced” system. With a LCOE value that lies mid-way between those in the other two scenarios, this system of 35 kW PV and 210 kWh battery can supply power for around 21 hours (probable outage of around 3 hours), based on the load demand considered.

We calculated the costs for the “balanced” sys-tem (Scenario 2 in Table 10) since it was the most promising in terms of both cost and reliability. Table 11–Table 13 show the total cost of the system and its break-up. Figure 9 to Figure 11 indicate the component-wise cost contributions to the system costs.

System Costs

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Figure 9: Break-up of capital cost and fixed cost for the “balanced” system

Figure 10: Break-up of capital cost for the “balanced” system

Figure 11: Break-up of fixed cost for the “balanced” system

Sensitivity Analysis

Capital cost as grant

With VRLA Gel battery

Techno-economic Comparison for Hourly and Minute-wise Simulations

Since the system costs and LCOE are strong functions of input costs, we conducted a few sensitivity analyses on the “balanced” system to explore options for reducing the LCOE.

Several micro-grid projects deployed in India till date have utilised CSR grants or similar funds to cover the capital cost of SPVMGs, thereby lowering the LCOE for a system de-veloper, significantly. However, the fixed costs of the plant, comprising mostly plant O&M, cost of battery replacement and cost of inverter replacement, have to be recovered from electricity sale. For the “balanced” system, when the capital cost is provided as a grant, the LCOE works out to be INR 19.1/kWh. Table 14 shows the break-up of the system costs, when the capital cost is covered through a grant.

We evaluated the “balanced” system (PV=30 kW, Bat-tery=210 kWh) using the specifications of a different variant of lead-acid battery, namely the VRLA “Long life” Gel battery (Vic-tron Energy, 2016). The capital cost of the battery increased by INR 1,500/kWh, as compared with that of the AGM variant. We conservatively assumed the life of the gel battery to be seven years, since the battery offers a design service life of maximum 10 years at 30°C. The LCOE for the same system reduced to INR 25.6/kWh. Table 15 shows the break-up of the system costs. Even though the capital cost is slightly higher, the fixed cost is nearly half of that shown in Table 11 for the same sys-tem using a VRLA AGM battery. Here, the fixed cost decreases due to fewer battery replacements while using a VRLA Gel battery.

We performed a techno-economic comparison of hourly and minute-wise simulations for the final shortlisted system configu-ration obtained in Scenario 2. Table 16 shows the results of the techno-economic comparison. We observed that the minute-wise simulations outperform the hourly simulations in capturing the granularity of battery performance. For the hourly modelling, two adjacent points represented two different hours. Thus, the change in battery charge/discharge power observed between two consecutive hours was significantly different as compared with that observed between consecutive minutes in the minute-scale modelling. This caused a considerable change in battery voltage in the hourly simulations. Thus, the battery losses calcu-lated in the hourly simulations were also higher as opposed to those in the minute-level simulations. Unmet load and 𝑇𝐿𝑃𝑆𝑃 were higher in the hourly calculations as the smaller fluctuations went unnoticed. However, in the minute-wise simulations, the cycling of battery closely resembles real operation. The battery under-goes frequent cycling and the calculated battery life is slightly lower than that in the hourly simulations. However, due to the lower value of battery losses, the net energy supplied from the SPVMG increased and hence LCOE was less in the case of the minute-wise simulations.

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Load Demand Data

Appendix A

For obtaining a continuous demand profile, we first aggregated month-wise data from feeder F6 for all the 12 months. From each month’s data, we arranged the daily demand data in a matrix of size 31×1,440, 30×1,440 or 28×1,440 depending on the month considered. In this case, 31, 30 or 28 indicated the number of days in a month and 1,440 represented the total minutes in a day. Then we calculated the mean of non-zero values for each day and replaced all the missing (or zero value) data points in a day. This process was repeated for all the days in a month and was completed for 12 months. The daily mean captured the aver-age consumption in a day. We then arranged daily profiles to get a continuous demand profile,representing the electricity consumption for an entire year, at minute scale. We also generated an hourly demand profile from the same data. Subsequently, we used these two profiles as inputs for the technical modelling of a SPVMG.

We could not obtain information regarding the exact number of consumers corresponding to the demand profiles from the local distribu-tion company serving Kollegal area in KA. We only had information that the feeder repre-sented the electricity demand for close to 20 villages. Thus, we had to find a way of using this aggregated demand data. We conducted a demand estimation to calculate the peak day and night time demand of a typical village, as shown in Table 17 and Table A.1.2. We ob-served that the peak day and night time de-mand for a village comprising 120 households with domestic and other essential electricity needs were 9.5 kW and 12.8 kW, respectively, as shown in Table 17. The feeder demand data indicated a peak demand consumption of 1.4 MW. Thus, we scaled down the demand profile to 1% of its original value.

This scaled-down profile had a peak de-mand of 14 kW, which is approximately close to the peak electricity demand (usually at night) seen in typical Indian villages comprising around 120 households, as shown in Table 17 . While scaling down, we retained the intra-day variability in the demand profile to help design the system for a close-to-real demand pattern. Thus, the feeder load profile showed average and peak demands of 6.3 kW and 14 kW. We observed peak demand (14 kW) on April 6, 2015, for the time period considered. There-fore, we also looked at the demand pattern for the same day across different seasons to un-derstand the variation in demand consumption across seasons. Figure 12 shows the hourly demand for four typical days of a year, i.e., 6th day of January, April, July and October.

Technical Article


Solar Module Datasheet Parameters

Battery Performance Model

Module manufacturer: ELDORA - Vikram Solar

Model name and mount type: Eldora VSP.72.320.03 - Multi-crystalline; Glass/Cell/Polymer sheet

This section presents the details of the battery performance model. We modelled the performance characteristics based on the bat-tery design, explained in Sections 3.2.1 and 3.2.2. The expressions used in determining the battery performance have been listed step-wise in this section.

Step-1: Calculate capacity ratio “𝑐”, rate constant “𝑘” and maximum cell capacity “𝑞𝑚𝑎𝑥,𝑐 ” (Manwell & McGowan, 1993).

Step-2: Initialise the available charge, 𝑞1,0, and bound charge, 𝑞2,0, using the values of 𝑐:

Step-3: Initialise all variables required for the simulation

Step-4: Find the value of 𝑃𝑏 at time “t” as:

Technical Article


Step-5: If 𝑃𝑏 > 0, battery will discharge power to the load. Compute 𝐼 𝑑 , 𝐼 𝑑,𝑚𝑎𝑥 , 𝑞𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑔𝑒 , 𝑞1,𝑞2, 𝑞, 𝑉𝑐 , 𝑉𝑏 , 𝑆𝑂𝐶, 𝐷𝑂𝐷 and 𝑃𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚,𝑏𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑦. The equations for computing the above parameters are as follows:

Step-6: In the same way, if 𝑃𝑏 < 0, battery is in charging mode. Similarly, compute all parameters as follows:

SoC and DOD are calculated similarly to discharging mode.

Technical Article


Step-7: Calculate the reliability parameters: excess electricity, unmet load and 𝑇𝐿𝑃𝑆𝑃:

Step-8: Repeat the process and calculate the PV and battery output data for all 8,760 hours of the year.

This section covers the additional details regarding the methodology and expressions used in the financial modelling.

We denoted the O&M value for each year with 𝐶𝑂&𝑀; the value for the first year was INR 1. 66 lakh. The value of 𝐶𝑂&𝑀 in year 1 was escalated at a rate of 𝑂&𝑀𝑟 annually, till the end of the project life (𝑃𝐿 ).

Thus, 𝑂&𝑀𝑣𝑎𝑙 in the nth year can be expressed as:

Where, 𝑂&𝑀𝑣𝑎𝑙,𝑛−1 represents the value of O&M in the previous year.

O&M calculation:

Depreciation calculation:

Financial Model

Technical Article


𝐶𝐵𝐴𝑇𝑟 = 𝑁𝑃𝑉(𝑑, 𝐵𝐴𝑇𝑠 ∗ 𝐶𝐵𝐴𝑇 ) , with replacements occurring once in 𝐿𝑏 years. We represented the battery life as 𝐿𝑏 and calculated it fromthe technical model. If 𝐿𝑏 is 3. 4 years, for example, then to calculate the replacement cost, we rounded up 𝐿𝑏 to the nearest integer, i. e. , 4 years. Thus, the battery was replaced six times during a project life of 25 years. We assumed the inverter to have a life of 10 years. Thus, it was replaced only twice in 𝑃𝐿 years for all the simulated scenarios, and we calculated the total inverter replacement cost (𝐶𝐼 𝑁𝑉𝑟 ) as:

Technical Article


DUNMORE Announces New DUN-SOLAR™ Photovoltaic Backsheets

UNMORE is proud to announce its expanded portfolio of UL listed back-sheets for photovoltaic applications. The DUN-SOLAR™ products are designed and manufactured for solar applications where robust char-acteristics are needed, such as long term UV exposure and wide tem-perature ranges. By incorporating high performance materials into the coated and laminated films, DUN-SOLAR backsheets provide superior moisture resistance, thermal, and UV stability. These photovoltaic (PV) backsheets combine process stability with excellent functionality. With proven durability in the field, the expanded DUN-SOLAR portfolio of over 35 UL listed products includes polyester and polyvinyl fluoride film (PVF) constructions for 1000 volt and 1500 volt applications. PV backsheets that meet California (UL 1703 Fire Rating) and IEC 61730) are available in clear, white, and black configurations. Also available are other new and unique DUNMORE backsheets, including the DS392R for Bifacial Modules and the DS450 and DS475 PPC+ backsheets, which allow for greater module output and manufacturing efficiencies. DUNMORE is also a leader in (Polyvinyl Fluoride / Aluminum / Polyester / Polyethylene (TAPE) solar backsheets for copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) pan-els and flexible module fabrication.

DUNMORE’s two US manufacturing facilities and European facility in Germany provide a truly global supply chain and technical support capa-bilities. For PV module manufacturers that are looking for a technology leader and value long lasting partnerships, DUNMORE is a leading sup-plier. DUN-SOLAR products complement its market leadership position in diverse industries such as aerospace, energy, and graphics.

D

New Ul Listed Dun-Solar™ Back sheets For Photovoltaic Applications With Long Term Uv Exposure And Wide Temperature Ranges Are Now Avail able From Dunmore.

Neil Gillespie, Vice Presi-dent of Technology for DUNMORE states that, “DUNMORE has been manufacturing backsheet films for over 10 years and continues to solve unique material science challenges with our customer as they seek to increase perfor-mance and drive costs out of their manufacturing operations.”


“The new TAP was developed in response to the growing demand for reliable Rapid Shut-down solutions,” says Zvi Alon, Chairman & CEO at Tigo. “Our main goals were to improve visibility, simplify installation, and ensure safety in a commu-nication device that can now individually collect data from hundreds of smart modules. Tigo’s commercial and indus-trial project partners with large PV systems especially benefit from this cost-competitive solu-tion in time for NEC 2017 to take effect.”

Tigo Introduces New Tigo Access Point (TAP) as UL-Certified Communication Device for TS4 Platform

THE HIGHLIGHTS OF TAP INCLUDE:

WHAT COMPRISES A TIGO SYSTEM WITH TAP?

he TAP is Tigo’s new wireless device for communication between the Cloud Connect Advanced (CCA) uni-versal data logger and the TS4 units – integrated (TS4-X), retrofitted/add-on (TS4-R-X), and retrofitted/add-on for 2 modules (TS4-R-X-Duo). Similar to the Tigo’s legacy Gateway product, the TAP is small in size with a wider range and increased module capac-ity. TAP is now shipping worldwide. The TAP improves the data manage-ment of residential, commercial, and industrial solar systems by wirelessly communicating with smart modules. Each TAP collects data from up to 300 TS4 units (~100kW systems) or up to 600 modules using TS4-R-X-Duo (~160kW systems). It also greatly improves safety with module-level deactivation for Rapid Shutdown. When paired with a CCA, the TAP provides unparalleled visibility into solar installations.

• UL-Certified for Rapid Shutdown• Outdoor rating of IP68• Module-level deactivation• High definition, sampling as low as every

2 seconds• Scalable architecture• Mounts easily on module frame without

tools• Simplified installation due to new & im-

proved wiring compartment• Available for new integrated & retrofitted/

add-on systems

The Tigo system has three components. First, the TAP which wirelessly communicates with the smart modules and is hardwired to the CCA via a RS485 cable. Second, the smart PV modules that are equipped with integrated (TS4-X), retrofitted/add-on (TS4-R-X), or retrofitted/add-on for 2 modules (TS4-R-X-Duo). Third, the CCA which collects data from all PV system components – including modules, inverters, revenue-grade meter, etc. – and sends system information to the cloud.

T

Tigo®, pioneer of the smart modular Flex MLPE platform, announced the availability of its new Tigo Access Point (TAP).


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