When someone thinks about small hydro power in India, he or she thinks mainly about North East or Himachal Pradesh, or sometimes perhaps Karnataka. Tamil Nadu does not usually come to mind for small hydro, and perhaps with justification, because the state does not figure in the country in the...

Following the allegations from US about solar PV module dumping by Chinese and Vietnamese manufacturers, a new controversy has emerged. The Wind Tower Trade Coalition in the US has now accused Chinese companies of using unfair pricing methods a.k.a predatory pricing to undercut the competition significantly effectively ensuring that they...

The Indian government recently announced that they would take no actions on the cheap Chinese modules that are being dumped onto the Indian market. India is expected to have a bumper year in terms of solar installations with various state policies - notably Gujarat, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh expected to...

Biomass is one of the renewable energy domains in which Tamil Nadu could have significant potential for progress in future. Estimates suggest only about 10% of the potential has so far been utilized. Of course, the lack of a robust supply chain that make create supply and price security is...

The buzz doing the rounds is that Tamil Nadu will soon be coming out with a comprehensive solar policy. Numbers such as 3000 MW by 2015 are doing the rounds, but there have been no concrete announcements as yet on solar power plant plans. However, some announcements have been made...

The potential for off-grid solar is not only large, but is growing rapidly. The five major drivers that are influencing the growth of the off grid solar industry is elaborated in this  blog: Lagging grid growth The importance of grid growth as a driver for solar lighting demand varies by...

It is no secret that the explosive growth in the wind energy sector in India is chiefly attributed to the accelerated depreciation incentive that has been adopted. AD is a mechanism through which project developers can show that their asset has depreciated at a significantly faster rate over its life...

Over the course of 2011, investments in renewable energy rose by about 5% to $260 billion, up from $247 billion in 2010 and $186.5 billion in 2009, according to numbers released by BNEF. Investments in 2010 were largely driven by wind energy while 2011 clearly belonged to solar. New financial...

The wind power is highly variable in nature. The unpredictable and infirm nature of wind energy poses a great challenge for the grid management. There are also other constraints such as availability of transmission infrastructure to evacuate the entire power generated by the wind energy promoters. Tamil Nadu government’s policy...

With power deficit becoming a pressing problem, the Tamil Nadu state government is not surprisingly pushing through many thermal projects in the state. Here is a list of the prominent thermal projects in various stages of development: North Chennai Thermal Power Station- Stage-II is being expanded, with two units of...