We believe India will continue to provide tremendous growth opportunities in renewables for the next decade or more.

Andrew Hines

- Co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer, CleanMax

As a leading solar EPC solution provider, how do you assess growth opportunities in the solar sector in India?

India is one of the world's largest and most promising renewable energy markets in the world, due to a combination of scale, rising electricity demand, high electricity costs, and abundant wind and especially solar resources.  In addition to government and utility projects, India has a large commercial and industrial segment which is very eager to source their power from renewable sources.

As a leading B2B renewable energy provider, CleanMax has been providing solar power to leading corporates for nearly a decade, and has seen demand from this segment accelerate due to increasing cost competitiveness of solar, as well as to more and more ambitious corporate sustainability agendas.

CleanMax has recently forayed into Wind Solar Hybrid (WSH). Could you brief us on the scope and potential for WSH and your road map?

CleanMax has launched its wind-solar hybrid offering so that we can provide our corporate customers a solution which offsets a larger share of their energy usage with low-cost clean energy.

While both solar and wind generation are variable, in India the two sources are highly complementary. Solar generates during the day, while wind peaks in the evening and at night, and they also peak at different times of the year. So with a wind-solar hybrid, we can supply a consistent source of power, which means our clients can source a greater percentage of their requirement from renewables, which also means greater total savings.

CleanMax has commissioned 110MW of wind-solar hybrid to date, and another 172 MW is slated to be commission in the next 18 months.

What are the challenges in this space, especially integrating challenges and what supportive WSH policy / regulatory reforms you are looking at?

Since solar and wind power generation are complementary, these projects allow us to make more efficient use of grid infrastructure, but pumping more power through the same infrastructure. In other words, we achieve a much higher plant load factor (PLF) than standalone wind or solar projects.  That efficiency gain confers benefits to us and our customers, and also for the grid in general.

A few states, particularly Gujarat, have recognised those benefits and therefore set up policies to encourage these projects. Gujarat provides a 50% cross subsidy surcharge waiver and other benefits for wind-solar hybrid projects. This helps to spur adoption, and provides a specific and long-term policy framework in which these projects can be set up. However, even in the absence of such benefits, we are finding that wind-solar hybrid plants can be successful.

What is your current order book status and how do you expect the growth in the next couple of years? 

Our current operational capacity is around 700 MW and CleanMax plans to increase this to 2 GW in the next 3 years. This capacity is entirely for private users, and particularly large corporates, which have always been the key target segment for CleanMax.

What is your assessment on the impact of newly proposed BCD on the sector as a whole and EPC solution providers like CleanMax?

Since modules make up a large share of a project's capital cost, any increase to module cost will lead directly to a higher electricity tariff. Solar power is already among the cheapest forms of power generation in India, so the overall proposition for solar power will remain strong. However, the cost will be passed onto electricity consumers.

What is assessment on the impact of cancellation of net metering on the solar industry as a whole?

Net metering has been an important enabler for the rooftop solar segment in India. Sensible net metering regulations, which balance consumer and discom interests, make sense for the public, particularly if the government wants to encourage rooftop solar rather than only large utility-scale projects.

Since the logic for rooftop solar is very compelling for consumers and for central and state governments, we are confident that most governments, if not all, will continue to support this segment.

What are the critical challenges the country is facing in bringing solar energy to scale?

To meet its ambitious renewable energy goals in the remainder of this decade and beyond, India needs to ensure it pursues a long-term strategy to steadily increase the share of renewables into the grid, with the long-time goal of complete decarbonisation.

One key area of focus must be on transmission and grid balancing, which will become a bottleneck to renewables if problems are not addressed. Transmission infrastructure must be planned well in advance. Wind-solar hybrid actually suits this objective very well, since makes better use of transmission infrastructure.

The grid must also become more flexible, instead of relying on an outdated model of “baseload” coal power generation. Flexibility can come from storage, but also from demand-response, and regulations which create the right incentives for generators to provide power when it is needed.

The solar and storage pairing is still relatively new. How do you assess the growth prospects, and how competitive are the regulatory platforms catalysing the growth?

Storage can really be thought of as independent but often complementary to solar. Storage can be deployed alongside utility-scale or rooftop solar, or wind or wind-solar hybrid, or on its own.

I say this partly because to make optimum use of storage, we need to think not about using storage to turn solar into a round-the-clock power generation, which would be very expensive and inefficient. Instead, we should think about creating more flexible incentives and regulations to allow storage to be used to balance supply and demand. Really what you are trying to do is to create the conditions in which the value of storage can be unlocked, by allowing a storage owner to benefit from the value it is providing to the grid.

Brief us on your road map for the next couple of years?

We believe India will continue to provide tremendous growth opportunities in renewables for the next decade or more, including in the commercial and industrial segment where we have seen demand really accelerate. With new state markets opening up to open access, and new offerings like wind-solar hybrid and storage, we see enormous potential in the market.

We also see growth opportunities in other Asian markets, and we have had success in the rooftop solar markets in the UAE and Thailand, where CleanMax has established itself as a leading developer.

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