At RESolve, we love Solar(and Wind, and anything related to sustainable energy); we love statistics and analysis(just like a lot of cricket fans do); and we love writing. The result? The birth of the RESolve blog way back in July 2012.
It was an exciting journey, and we were fortunate to write a lot about some of the major events and trends that shaped the industry as we see it today.We saw a lot of false starts and some real progress. For example, we pondered whether a Rooftop PV revolution was brewing in India in October 2012, when KPMG predicted that rooftop solar would reach 4 GW installed capacity in India by 2017, we felt that the theoretical potential is there but actual adoption will be a small percentage of the potential(yes, it is a big vague, since we were also not sure). As we write this at the beginning of 2017, the rooftop PV installations stand at about 1 GW, starting at a mountain of a target in front of it (from 1 GW to 40 GW in 5 years – by 2022).
Another big miss we wrote about frequently was the Tamil Nadu Solar Policy. In October 2012, the state came up with an extremely ambitious target of achieving 3 GW within 3 years(by 2015). But after a promising start, the policy implementation lost its way after stumbling from one controversy to another. Surprisingly, despite all the missteps, the state of Tamil Nadu somehow managed to overtake some of the early mover states like Gujarat and Rajasthan and achieve the Number 1 status in terms of total installed solar generation capacity(1590 MW as of 31 December 2016 as per MNRE). For this, Tamil Nadu has to thank Adani Group which set up world’s largest single location solar plant.
It is also interesting to note that Tamil Nadu remains the leader in Wind installations as well(7694 MW as of 31 December 2016 as per MNRE. Total Wind installations in India stood at 28,666 MW on the same date).
We also had the chance to write extensively on some of the burning topics of each season – Domestic Content Requirement, Local Manufacturing and Trade Disputes, the continuous drop in solar prices, policy and regulatory updates(including the not-so-successful REC policy implementation), and also published quite a few whitepapers on various topics. In fact, when we released a whitepaper on the Capacity Utilisation Factor Vs Performance Ratio(read here), we did not in our wildest dreams imagine that it will be the most read whitepapers across the industry even after 3 years after publishing it(a quick google search will validate this point). This, we achieved with “ZERO” effort in SEO(Search Engine Optimization).
Our love for the sector was rewarded in the form of love from our readers. Despite lacking the financial or organisational muscle of some of the big business intelligence firms, readers like you visited these pages in large numbers, and thousands of enthusiastic readers across all levels of Indian and global organisations in the sector(analysts/junior engineers, all the way up to CXOs) signed up for our newsletters. Our opinion was sought by the global media, and we were invited to speak at practically every major conference. Heady days indeed.
But somewhere along the journey, we lost the fun of writing. The reasons included the lack of quality content to analyse, the massive chasm between talk and action at the policy and regulatory level, and a general slowdown in the sector during 2014-15. We decided to take a break, and focused on a few other things.
And now, we are glad to be back. We have decided to resume our journey of writing about the sector!! And are aware that there is lot of catching up to do 🙂
There are quite a few ideas on the table, but we are yet to decide the way forward.(Your ideas are always welcome).
And that brings us to the title of this blog, the idea of starting a Sunday RE Brunch series, a weekly roundup. Every weekday, we are bombarded by news stories and data points from several news aggregators, and sometimes it gets difficult to keep track of what is happening. It is also a tough task to distinguish between relevant information and PR content masquerading as analysis. We thought that it might be worthwhile trying to read these news at leisure during the weekend, distill the most important information and share it through this blog. You can read it at your home with a cup of hot coffee/tea. We do not know how this will shape up(after all, who would want to waste Sunday mornings by reading about solar, isn’t it? Aren’t there better things to do?), but we believe that it is going to be fun. And we are counting on your continued support to pull it off.
And without much further ado, we present the first edition of the Sunday RE Brunch series – click here to read. We hope you enjoy it. Don’t forget to share your thoughts on the Sunday Brunch.
We end this blog on a very cheeky note 🙂
(PS: The blog series is supported by Aspiration Cleantech Ventures)