Alpex Solar, a small domestic module manufacturer with annual production capacity of 848 MW, successfully completed an INR 750 million IPO in February 2024. The IPO was oversubscribed by 300 times due to strong investor demand. The stock listed at 1.9x issue price and has since soared to 4.3x issue price trading at a fantastic P/E ratio of 323. Several other manufacturers are lining up with IPO plans to take advantage of market interest. Waaree Energies is planning to raise INR 30 billion (USD 360 million) for its 6 GW ingot, wafer, cell and module manufacturing facility. Premier has filed pre ..read more

100% waiver of inter-state transmission system (ISTS) charges for full 25 year project life is set to be phased out shortly. The waiver is available to all renewable and storage projects completed by June 2025 with charges expected to be reinstated annually in increments of 25% for projects completed thereafter. Green hydrogen and offshore wind projects have been given longer completion deadlines of December 2030 and 2032 respectively to avail the waiver. The ISTS charge waiver, worth a saving of about INR 0.40-0.71/ kWh depending on project location, was first proposed by the government in 20 ..read more

Maharashtra has allocated a remarkable 9,000 MW agri-solar project capacity across 95 project developers. The state agency, MSEB Solar Agro Power Limited (MSAPL), had issued a flurry of tenders in the last three months for setting up distributed solar capacity in chunks of about 10-15 MW each for injection at individual substation level. There were two different kinds of tenders – for individual projects and for aggregated district level (about 200 MW each) – totaling 5,000 MW and 3,650 MW respectively. MSAPL finally awarded 4,484 MW and 3,299 MW capacity respectively at tariffs ranging betwee ..read more

SECI recently completed the first ever auction for a “firm and dispatchable renewable energy” (FDRE) tender. The 1,500 MW tender was undersubscribed with only 600 MW of bids received and 480 MW awarded to JSW (180 MW), Hero (120), Serentica (100) and ReNew (80) at tariffs of INR 5.59-5.60/ kWh. Two other so-called FDRE auctions by NTPC (3,000 MW) and NHPC (1,500 MW) were also completed in the last month but they were both actually peak power tenders in disguise. There are many unique provisions relating to power supply obligation in the SECI tender. It specifies a time-block wise power output ..read more

India’s national power sector regulator, CERC, has made a series of amendments to the national REC market framework over the last couple of years. After introduction of bilateral trading, removal of price bands and extending instrument validity forever from December 2022 onwards, it made RECs technology agnostic from October 2023 onwards. Buyers on exchanges can no longer trace RECs to the underlying projects, technology or vintage. Since October 2023, trading frequency has also been increased from once a month to once every fortnight. The intent of all these changes is to remove all market di ..read more

MNRE’s last ALMM order had exempted projects commissioned by March 2024 from ALMM requirement. The government issued an amendment in February providing further relaxation bowing to project developer concerns around insufficient availability of high efficiency domestic modules. The amendment sought to waive the requirement completely for open access projects and for other projects provided they placed module orders before 31 March 2024. It was, however, inexplicably withdrawn within a week creating a state of confusion and speculation in the industry. We believe that the proposed amendment was ..read more

GUVNL has concluded an auction for a 250 MW/ 500 MWh standalone battery storage tender. The batteries will be deployed at a state transmission sub-station for providing energy arbitrage, load shifting and other applications. Bidders were required to quote a flat capacity charge for providing two operational cycles per day over twelve years. Gensol and Indigrid have won 70 MW and 180 MW capacities with bids of INR 4.48 and 4.49 million/ MW/ month respectively. JSW, Hero, NTPC, ACME, SJVN and EDF were the other bidders with bids ranging between INR 4.49-9.95 million/ MW/ month. This was the seco ..read more

India’s buoyant public equity market is eagerly lapping up renewable energy stocks. Alpex Solar, a relatively small module manufacturer with total capacity of only 450 MW per annum, completed an INR 744 million (USD 9 million) IPO in February 2024 with over 300x response to its issue. The stock is now trading at a stupendous 3x offer price and over 200x annual earnings. IREDA’s INR 6.4 billion (USD 77 million) IPO in November 2023 was oversubscribed by 39x and the stock now trades at 4.6x its offer price. Gensol, a listed company offering a mix of solar EPC and related services, recently raise ..read more

First Solar has become the first company, awarded capacity in the module manufacturing PLI scheme, to announce full commercial operations ahead of time. The company’s 3.3 GW integrated thin-film module manufacturing plant commenced production in January 2024. It has already tied up bulk of its first year output with buyers in India and the US. Tata is the only other scheme winner expecting to commission its 4 GW cell-module awarded capacity ahead of time. The company’s 4.3 GW mono-PERC line, upgradable to TOPCon technology, is expected to commence production by Q4 this year. Reliance, awarded ..read more

Suzlon and Inox Wind, the two biggest Indian wind turbine manufacturers, have announced much improved financial results for Q4 2023. Suzlon reported revenues of INR 43 billion in 9M FY 2024 largely in line with the previous year but EBITDA was up to INR 6.8 billion from INR 6.1 billion, while PAT witnessed 43x growth YOY to INR 4.3 billion. The company turned to net cash position of INR 7 billion as of December 2023 from net debt of INR 11.8 billion in the previous year. Similarly, Inox Wind has reported revenue rising to INR 12 billion in 9M 2024 from INR 5.6 billion last year, EBITDA of INR ..read more