India

India’s Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission is bound to achieve 20 GW until 2022. India has some KW of installed solar power until the kick start of the Mission in 2010. India is one of the two countries in the world with more than one billion and is also home to many persons without electricity. But we are not talking about off-grid applications, we are talking about on-grid and with Fit. India learnt the lesson of Fit and RPS driven PPA and created their own scheme: RPO – Renewable Purchase Obligation – with a reverse bidding to determine the Fit.

Reliance Power is in talks with Shell to jointly set up a LNG terminal to secure supplies for its gas-fired power plant.

Tata Power Ltd, India’s largest integrated power utility, has confirmed its buy out of the 51% stake owned by BP Alternative Energy Holding in their joint company, Tata BP Solar.

From the commissioning schedule of ultra mega power projects (UMPPs) provided by the power ministry, it seems that the the projects are well on track with respect to their completion timelines. For instance, CEA has revised the timelines for all five units of the 4,000 MW Mundra UMPP so that the projects may achieve commissioning much earlier than was originally envisaged in the PPA schedule. For the 800 MW unit 1, CEA has pushed the commissioning date forward by nearly five months to February, 2012 as against the scheduled commissioning date of August, 2012. The CEA has similarly revised the commissioning dates for the remaining four units. The new dates for the four units are now May, 2012 (unit-II), September, 2012 (unit-III), November, 2012 (unit-IV), and February, 2013 (unit-V) as against the original schedule where the the units were expected to go on steam form February, 2013, August, 2013, February, 2014 and August, 2013 respectively. The Mundra UMPP has been set up by Coastal Gujarat Power Limited (CGPL), a wholly owned subsidiary of TPIL, which was incorporated as a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) to implement the project. The five units of 800 MW each generate a total of 4000 MW power using supercritical technology.

Lok Sabha MP Vundavali Aruna Kumar has requested allocation of 0.20 mmscmd of gas on a priority basis for APGPCL's 270 MW power plant situated in Vijjeswaram.

Inadequate supply of coal from Coal India has been cited as one of the major reasons for the coal crunch facing the thermal sector. This irregular and short supply of coal has thus, forced several power stations to operate below their installed capacities. The website carries here, details of the coal stock position at various TPSs in the country as of December 14, 2011. This is categorized according to name, capacity, critical coal stock and reasons behind the shortage. Some of the plants facing acute coal shortages are as under: Dadri NCTPP (1,820 MW) -- Due to less receipt of coal from Central Coalfields Limited (CCL) Kahalgaon TPS (2,340 MW) -- Due to less receipt of imported coal because of transportation constraint of Railways Unchahar TPS (1,050 MW) -- Due to less receipt from CCL Rihand STPS (2,000 MW) -- Due to less receipt of coal from Northern Coalfields Limited (NCL) Sanjay Gandhi TPS (1,340 MW) -- Due to unloading constraints Simhadri TPS (1,500 MW) -- Due to less receipt from SCCL  

Lack of clarity regarding coal supplies forced Adani Power to put its plans for capacity expansion of 6,500 megawatts on hold.

ABB has booked an order worth more than Rs. 4000 crore from Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd.,for ultrahigh-voltage direct current transmission system.

Suzlon Energy Limited announced cumulative orders of 166.30 MW in India over a two month period.

NHPC wants Uttarakhand to address issues to its hydro project to  facilitate the signing of the implementation agreement.

The Empowered Joint Group has reached a consensus on sharing of benefits or the provision of saleable power from the respective JV projects, between the goverments of India and Bhuitan.

Himachal Pradesh Electricity Regulatory Commission has set various open access charges.

Hindustan Construction Company has finally obtained financial assistance throughf an interest bearing advance of Rs 10 crore from the NHPC.

Bangladesh approved hikes in electricity prices for retail consumers by an average of 21.3 percent in two stages by February. This move is designed to cut the losses of the state-run power generating firm. "We decided to raise electricity price to reduce the pressure on government funds as it has to borrow from the banking system to subsidise the higher price of electricity," said Syed Yusuf Hossain, chairman of the Bangladesh Energy Regulation Commission. The first increase will be factored into December bills and the second in February bills to reach an average of 4.63 taka per kilowatt hour.