MNRE’s October 2020 Report Card For Cabinet

In its’s monthly report for the union Cabinet, the R.K Singh led MNRE has highlighted key monthly achievements for October this year. 

While the success with minimising Covid impact has been set off by the lingering issues on other fronts  that have caused a slowdown in fresh capacity installation, the MNRE does have a potential pipeline of almost 77 GW of solar and wind projects, including those under installation and bidding, to focus on in the coming months.

The key highlights from its October report:

A total of 406.22 MW of Renewable Energy (RE) capacity was added during the month, taking the cumulative installed RE capacity to 89.63 GW as on October 31, 2020. This includes 38.26 GW of Wind capacity, 36.32 GW of Solar capacity, 10.31 GW of Biopower and 4.74 GW of Small Hydro capacity. Further, projects of 49.59 GW capacity are at various stages of implementation. Projects of 27.41 GW capacity are under various stages of bidding.

Spending has been conservative with an expenditure of Rs. 1997.85 crore till October 31, 2020 which is around 35 percent of the Budget Estimate (BE) for the Ministry for the year 2020-21.

The evaluation of the pilot run of Component-A and Component-C of PM-KUSUM Scheme  was completed and a proposal for scaling up the Scheme (as approved by CCEA) and expansion of the Scheme (as announced in the Budget for 2020-21) was sent to the Ministry of Finance (MoF) for approval. While agreeing to the proposal, the MoF has advised to implement the scaled up Scheme during 2020-21 and that further extension will be considered after another evaluation. As per the approval proposal, 5000 MW capacity small solar power plants, 7 lakh stand-alone solar pumps and solarisation of 4 lakh grid connected pumps will be sanctioned cumulatively by 2020-21. The States have accordingly been requested for demand. Expect a major shortfall here, due to various factors, including shortage of equipment in the market .

In October,  the Ministry also issued guidelines for tariff based competitive bidding for procurement of power from Grid Connected Wind Solar Hybrid Projects on October 14, 2020.

The Draft Policy Framework for developing and promoting Decentralized Renewable Energy (DRE) Livelihood Applications in Rural Areas. This has been circulated for comments of stakeholders on October 19, 2020.

NIWE will also carry out Solar Radiation Resource Assessment studies in Ladakh, besides the start of work on some wind demonstration projects there.

Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) concluded bidding for Rajasthan Tranche-III solar power projects. Against the bid-out capacity of 1070 MW, bids have been received for a total capacity of 5790 MW.

A wind expert from Denmark joined the Ministry as provided under the MoU for Renewable Energy cooperation between the Ministry and Government of Denmark.