The Indian solar market added 1,869 MW in the second quarter of 2017, bringing installations in the first half of the year to 4,765 MW (surpassing the 4,313 MW installed in all of 2016), according to the latest India Solar Market Update released by Mercom India Research.

In the last year, FY2016-17, the country's solar energy capacity expanded by a record 5,525.98 MW. According to reports released by MNRE, India added 3,010 MW in the previous year, thus translating to an almost doubling of growth in the past year.

The development in the introduced limit in India is driven by monetary impetuses given by the administration. These are required to drive the Indian utility-scale PV development from 35 MW in 2010 to a combined limit of 627.2 MW by 2015.

With increase in share of renewables in the distribution system, it has become indispensable to incorporate large scale integration of energy storage, which gives flexibility to quickly ramp up supply in case the need arises.

With India looking at solar playing a major role in the country's energy mix, an emerging sticking point is the imbalance between usage of imported v/s domestic PV panels for local projects.

PV technology in India has completed more than 40 year and it is evolving continuously. Today, we occupy the position of a leader in the world's solar power market. India did a commendable job in the 1990s when manufacturing base was strengthened to over 300,000 smaller systems aggregated to 22 MW.

Nowadays, technology evolves and upgrades very fast. Do you think, it is a challenge to keep up with the fast-paced change when it comes to a testing facility like ERDA? Electrical Research and Development Association (ERDA) has also witnessed similar challenges in smart meter testing (development of IS:16444- Part-1 & part-2), change in Ministry of new and Renewable Energy (MNRE) specifications for solar lighting systems & solar pumping systems, change in BEE star rating programme for distribut

The market has been buoyant in the domestic sector with close to a million pumps sold in the different category of pumps over the last two years. However, sales in the agriculture sector has been anything but hunky-dory, relative to the humongous potential this sector offers in terms of both replacement pumps and new pumps.

Taking position action aimed at protecting the environment and refraining from practises which has an adverse impact, GAIL (India) Limited, over the years has exhibited its commitment towards the resorting the environmental balance in the country.