From the prime minister's election at the beginning of the year to the religious riots at the end of the year, the complicated situation in China was accompanied by the progress of photovoltaic industry in India. In 2019, the road of photovoltaic industry in India was bumpy.
Despite the difficult situation, we also see India's determination to develop photovoltaic industry. The Indian government is confident to complete the target of 100gw installed capacity in 2022 by formulating a mechanism more conducive to investors and adjusting the bidding price. At present, India also promotes the development of domestic manufacturing industry in an orderly manner by binding large-scale photovoltaic projects.
In this paper, from the perspective of industrial development, we summarize the year of photovoltaic 2019 in India.
A bad start to the game
From April to May this year, India's general election lasted for 39 days, resulting in the stagnation of the auction in the first quarter. Then, affected by the election and financing difficulties, the installation volume of roof photovoltaic declined month on month for the first time. The government of India cancelled the auction of 800MW project in the first quarter, which made India's photovoltaic opening unfavorable.
In May, Narendra Modi, India's prime minister, won a landslide victory and a second five-year term. The re-election of modi is very exciting for the solar energy industry, because Prime Minister modi encouraged the development of renewable energy and solar energy industry, formulated quite ambitious renewable energy plan and gave a lot of policy support to the industry. But this joy was soon dispelled by the real problems. Since the government has announced the winning bidder and still cancelled the auction, the upper limit of bidding price has become a controversial issue, resulting in many bidding projects being ignored.
CRISIL, an analyst, uses data to show that investors' interest in renewable energy projects in India has declined. CRISIL said that of the 64GW auctions in the previous fiscal year, about 26% of the projects were silent and the situation of bid cancellation increased. At the same time, the central and state distribution companies are setting lower and lower price caps, and low feed in tariffs, high land and capital costs, and payment delays have reduced the feasibility of solar and wind projects.
After that, there was an event that the infrastructure leasing and financial service providers (IL & FS) admitted that they were in arrears with their creditors' loans. As a result, India's non bank financial institutions were reluctant to lend to solar projects due to their conflict with PV. The lack of funds led to payment delay in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, trangana, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka, increased project risk and began to affect the progress of national photovoltaic bidding. Along with the development of solar energy industry this year, the change of trade tariff brings great uncertainty to the industry. In February this year, the Indian government decided to impose a five-year anti-dumping duty on the reinforced coated glass and non coated glass imported from Malaysia; in April this year, the Indian government announced a five-year anti-dumping duty on EVA, the packaging material for solar cell modules from mainland China, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Thailand; in July this year, the Indian general administration of trade relief imposed a five-year anti-dumping duty on EVA, the packaging material for solar cell modules from China At the end of July, the safeguard tax on solar cells and components in China and Malaysia changed from 25% to 20%, which will last until July 29, 2020.
In addition, land acquisition has become one of the biggest challenges in the photovoltaic market in India. Even the most experienced developers dare not say that they have not encountered problems in land allocation of the project. In India, it is very difficult for large-scale projects (100MW and above) to obtain land. First, the approval process of land transaction documents is complex and slow, and the laws and regulations on land non use are different in different states. Second, once some landowners realize that the land they own is listed as intentional land, they will raise the price wildly, or even mention the unreasonable degree of highlands; Finally, we need to deal with the land occupation of transmission lines. It is difficult for some transmission lines to obtain the consent of local landowners. To sum up, it needs to pay a huge soft cost to settle the land, and even this can not guarantee that it can be acquired in time. If it is dragged into the legal proceedings on land, it will also cause the project to be unable to be completed. Due to the land issue, the competition for bidding of solar energy projects which focus on the land provided by the government is becoming more and more fierce, forcing some developers to shift their attention to other countries' bidding.
Indian government is confident to achieve 100gw PV target
In June 2015, after five adjustments, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, raised the target of India's photovoltaic industry in 2022 from 20GW to 100gw, including 40gw of roof photovoltaic. It seems to the outside world that this goal is too "ambitious". The power grid carrying capacity and the investment intention of financial institutions are the two major challenges India is facing at present. At the same time, it also needs to focus on policy support to give sustainable growth demand to the photovoltaic field. In a word, it is very far away to achieve 100gw of installed capacity in 2020.
During these years, there have been many questions from all walks of life. Fitch solutions reported in April that by 2022, the installed capacity of wind power in India is about 54.7gw, while the target set by the Indian government is 60GW. The agency also said it was cautious about India's ability to meet its ambitious 2022 wind capacity growth targets due to land acquisition and grid bottlenecks, which have delayed implementation of projects in the wind power industry.
In the first quarter of 2019, due to the approval of developers, price ceiling, capital and other issues, India's solar photovoltaic installed capacity
