10 years of NDA: Renewable energy industry’s performance has been pretty good, says Enerfra Projects (India) MD UB Reddy
Updated - May 02, 2024 at 10:02 AM.
U B Reddy, Managing Director, Enerfra Projects (India) Pvt Ltd, a company that builds wind and solar projects for developers, shares his thoughts on the journey of renewable energy sector in last 10 years. Excerpts:
How has the industry’s performance been in the last ten years?
The renewable energy industry’s performance in the last ten years has been pretty good, though one might say that it could still have been better. True, solar installations have risen faster than wind, but that is also because solar projects are easier to build and require fewer approvals. Let us not forget that while wind can be put up only at certain sites, solar can come up anywhere. Last year (2023-24) was a good one for both solar and wind with solar installations of 15 GW and wind 3.2 GW. So, overall, things have been satisfactory.
The government has been proactive. For instance, wind installations were suffering because often they required clearance from the Ministry of Defence. This was one of the reasons for the installations not being as good as they could have been. But when the industry took the matter to Secretary, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, he quickly organised meetings with Defence and the matter has been sorted out. To give another example, wind installations were low because after the well-intentioned ‘reverse bidding’ some investors started bidding ultra-low tariffs, but at the industry’s request the government has changed the method of bidding to ‘closed bidding’. Because of these, one should see better capacity additions in the coming years.
Q
Any unfinished agenda?
The next government would do well to focus on streamlining policies for ‘scheduling and forecasting’, which is very important to handle intermittent supply from renewable energy plants. Also, in this exercise, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) should be involved, for the sake of accuracy of forecasting.
As for solar, the government’s Make In India policy has engendered many manufacturing units, which is very welcome. However, alongside the government should evolve a system for monitoring the quality of solar modules produced.
Also, I’d urge the government to take a re-look at the present policy of building large solar installations in single locations, because that might create grid-related issues.
Q
How would you rate the government’s performance?
As said earlier, it is difficult to ‘rate’ the government on this, because multiple factors come into play. Suffice to say that globally, except perhaps in China, the renewable energy industry’s performance has been good but not great. India is no exception to this trend.
Comments will be moderated by The Hindu BusinessLine editorial team.
Comments that are abusive, personal, incendiary or irrelevant cannot be published.
Please write complete sentences. Do not type comments in all capital letters, or in all lower case letters,
or using abbreviated text. (example: u cannot substitute for you, d is not 'the', n is not 'and').
We may remove hyperlinks within comments.
Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name, to avoid rejection.
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.
Sign into Unlock benefits!
Access 10 free stories per month
Access to comment on every story
Sign up/Manage to our newsletters
Get notified by email for early preview to new features, discounts & offers
Looks like you are already logged in from more than 3 devices!
To continue logging in, remove at least one device from the below list