-The Economic Times The April 28, 2012, issue of The Economist has a story on India's solar power and mentions Charanka village in Patan district, Gujarat. Solar energy can be converted into electricity, using photovoltaics, or can be converted into heat. (There are other technologies too, but those aren't important yet.) So far, solar thermal, or heating, in India has essentially meant solar cookers and water heaters, though it needn't stay that...

-IANS India's ambitious national solar programme has catalysed rapid growth in the solar market driving solar energy prices low and demonstrating how government policy can stimulate clean energy markets, according to a new report. In only two years, competitive bidding under India's National Solar Mission drove prices for grid-connected solar energy to nearly the price of electricity from fossil fuels, said the report released here Wednesday by the Natural Resources Defence...

-Live Mint At a time when India plans a multi-pronged attack on malnutrition in 200 high-burden districts, it will pay to examine the cracks in state institutions that have led to past failures and can still derail well-intentioned plans. Melghat, a tribal corner in the northeastern fringes of India’s richest state—Maharashtra—is an apt example of almost everything that has gone wrong in India’s response to malnutrition and child deaths. Every 14th child dies...

To lose bank guarantees for its four power plants in Rajasthan The Union Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has found Lanco Infratech guilty of false commissioning of solar power plants in Rajasthan. The company will now lose its first set of bank guarantees for the remaining four solar photovoltaic plants in Rajasthan. It has already lost bank guarantees of three other plants being set up in the state after...

India is readying to defend its policy requiring companies to source local content for the National Solar Mission project, a rule that has triggered protests from the US and the EU.  The commerce department is talking to the ministry of new and renewable energy on how to argue its case should the dispute reach the World Trade Organisation. The ministry is responsible for executing the Jawahar Lal Nehru National Solar Mission,...