The Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) has proposed introducing a green energy tariff of ₹2.543/kWh (~$0.034/kWh) for consumers who wish to switch to green energy. The proposed tariff submitted to Kerala State Electricity Regulatory Commission for approval reflects the extra cost to be incurred by KSEB on additional renewable energy procurement over its average power purchase cost and charges for compensating the licensee for the intermittent nature of such energy.

Bharat Heavy Electricals has invited bids for the operation and maintenance of a 65 MW solar power project in Tamil Nadu for NLC India for 19 months. The last day to submit the bids is May 16, 2023. The bids will be opened the next day. Bidders must submit an earnest money deposit of ₹786,800 (~$9,628).

The Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission has ruled that a power generator needs to fulfill only the two conditions provided in the Electricity Rules, 2005, to attain the captive status – the shareholding pattern and minimum consumption. The Commission noted that the consumers of Clean Wind Power’s 50 MW wind project satisfied these conditions by holding 32.90 % of the equity shares and consuming 100% of its total energy.

Battery maker Amara Raja has broken ground on Telangana’s first gigafactory for lithium cell and battery pack manufacturing in the Mahbubnagar district. The manufacturing unit will have a capacity of up to 16 GWh, catering to domestic and international markets. The gigafactory is expected to create direct employment for about 4,500 people and a similar number of indirect jobs.

Canada-based clean energy investor Brookfield Renewable Partners’ net loss narrowed to $32 million in the first quarter of the financial year 2023 from $78 million year-over-year (YoY) due to robust hydro generation across the portfolio, strong realized power pricing, and asset availability. Additionally, the company’s performance was helped by a $133 million foreign exchange gain for the January-March quarter compared to a $33 million loss YoY.

The U.S. Department of Energy has announced final energy efficiency rules for 16 product categories to help Americans save $570 billion in utility bills and cut greenhouse gas emissions by over 2.4 billion metric tons cumulatively over 30 years. The new standards will translate to a yearly utility bill saving of $652 million. They will be in effect from 2027.

The Tamil Nadu Cooperative Milk Producers’ Federation has invited bids to procure 30 MW of solar, wind, or surplus power from producers through an open access arrangement for five years. The scope of work includes the purchase of solar and wind power and surplus power from producers for metro dairies, one product dairy, one dairy-cum-powder plant at Ammapalayam, Madurai ice cream plant, and other outlets.

The Netherlands has presented a new climate package worth €28 billion (~$31 billion) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and combat climate change, in line with the EU’s target of reducing net emissions by 55% by 2030 compared to 1990. The package includes a range of measures to reduce CO2 emissions by 22 megatons by 2030 and make the electricity sector carbon-free by 2035.

A research group at the Institute for Basic Science, South Korea, has developed a method to recycle valuable metals from lithium-ion batteries using their spinning ‘concentric liquid reactors.’ The horizontally rotating reactor can process complex metal mixtures in a single rotating vessel. Lithium-ion batteries are becoming more popular as a source of energy storage, but they also create a new problem – an increase in lithium battery waste.