www.sesei.eu | dinesh.chand.sharma@sesei.eu | M: +919810079461 | Tel: +911133521500

Main News

Ministry of Power issued five Year power vision document

The Ministry of Power (MoP) has issued a vision document which charts the way forward for India’s power sector. The document points out the problem areas and sets the timeline for every aspect of power generation, evacuation, and distribution.

The document, called “Vision 2024”, aims at developing a sustainable, viable, efficient, and competitive power sector to facilitate economic and social development. The report points out that the generation capacity in India has increased drastically in the past decade, but the sector is beset with falling plant load factor (PLF) and stressed assets. 

Transmission is a huge problem for Indian renewable energy project developers. In many cases, renewable energy projects are ready to evacuate, but the evacuation infrastructure is not ready. In some other cases, due to the lack of proper transmission infrastructure, renewable energy has to be curtailed.

TAGS #MoP

New industrial policy to be announced soon

The government will soon announce a new industrial policy aimed at promoting growth of industries and creation of jobs.

Addressing the joint sitting of both Houses of Parliament, the President said work is underway in full earnest to transform India into a global manufacturing hub. "Keeping in view Industry 4.0, a new industrial policy will be announced shortly.

The new policy will replace the industrial policy of 1991 which was prepared in the backdrop of balance of payment crisis. This will be the third industrial policy after the ones released in 1956 and 1991.

The proposed policy aims at promoting emerging sectors and modernising existing industries. It will also look to reduce regulatory hurdles and encourage adoption of frontier technologies such as robotics and artificial intelligence.

TAGS #MII

India looking at newer EV battery technologies for strategic reasons

As part of India’s energy security plan, the government is exploring newer battery technologies such as polymer-based solid state batteries that may allow India to avoid dependence on lithium or cobalt imports.

This comes in the backdrop of Chinese state-owned firms securing lithium mine concessions in countries such as Bolivia, Argentina and Chile, which forms the so-called lithium triangle. The idea is to not allow India to fall in a vulnerable position with a likely threat of supply squeeze as has happened in the case of crude oil, with India being the world’s third largest oil importer.

Almost all electric vehicles in the country run on imported batteries, mostly from China. At present a lithium-ion battery accounts for 40% of the total cost of an electric vehicle. Lithium also has other uses such as in mobile phone batteries and solar panels.

DoT issues Guidelines for 5G trials across all available Spectrum bands Cabinet

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has issued guidelines for 5G trials across all available spectrum bands indicating to allocate up to 400 MHz of radio waves for experiments. The DoT has fixed a uniform fee of INR 5,000 (~64 Euro) for the trial licence. However, its validity will range between 3 month and 2 years, depending on the purpose for which the trial is being conducted.

The government has plans to conduct spectrum auction for 5G services by the end of this year to enable the roll-out of commercial services using the technology in 2020.

Indian entities involved in R&D, manufacturing, telecom operators and academia for the purpose of R&D and experimentation can get licence for a period of "up to two years, renewable on case to case basis by WPC, subject to truncation to prevent interference to licensed operations".