The first concerned the Indian government's rubber-stamping of plans to quintuple its commitment to solar to 100 gigawatts (GW) by 2022 as part of a $200bn (£120bn) investment plan for renewable energy. A few days later, Japanese lender SoftBank - together with Bharti Enterprises and Foxconn - announced plans to invest $20bn in Indian solar.
Others - including India's Reliance Power and US-headquartered SunEdison - are set to join the party. Russian gas giant Rosneft is reported to have held discussions with government officials to supply between 10 and 20 per cent of the 2022 commitment. It's a bold call by the country; currently, photovoltaic cells meet just 0.2 per cent of India's energy requirements.
Why solar? Firstly, India needs all the additional energy capacity it can get. The country has had a rolling power deficit since 1984, stifling development and providing one of the largest obstacles to Nahendra Modi's aspirations for 7 per cent GDP growth a year. Then, of course, there are the specifics: high levels of irradiance mean power output is excellent, the sector is not reliant on subsidies, and intraday demand and power generation is strongly matched. And, crucially, solar costs should soon beat the price of energy from burning coal, which India has been so heavily reliant on (see graph below).
Source: Tata Power Solar
Conscious of the need to dramatically ramp up grid capacity, the government has ensured its energy sector is one of the few areas of the economy where foreign investors are able to own 100 per cent of Indian companies. Another mooted incentive would see foreign backers of solar projects allowed to denominate contracts in dollars rather than rupees, thereby providing a strong currency hedge.
Analysts at E&Y believe this combination of factors (pdf) will make India the most desirable investment destination for solar power in the coming years. And while there are currently scant opportunities in London, a pure play on the sector may soon be coming to the UK market.
Armstrong Energy Global (AEG), a UK-headquartered group with solar farms in the east of India, recently appointed brokers at Cantor Fitzgerald to advise it on an initial public offering on Aim later this year. In a bid to grow its existing plant capacity to 1GW by 2018, the company hopes to raise £50m from the junior market, following on from a series of private capital-raisings. "Our experience has been very positive in terms of getting money deployed and building a strong pipeline of projects," co-founder Andrew Newman told Investors Chronicle, explaining that the pre-IPO money is already being used to connect Armstrong's power plants to pre-existing infrastructure.
The technical specifications for the power plants are no different to those in the UK - where AEG's directors launched the first dedicated solar feed-in tariff fund in 2010 - although installation costs are around 50 per cent lower in India, even without subsidies. The main difference with India is the scale of the solar farms permitted, which is key to AEG's plans for rapid growth.
As for the investment proposition, the company is keen to avoid the associations with Indian alternative energy disappointments such as Infrastructure India (IIP) and Greenko (GKO). "We've looked at existing solar yield companies and the existing Indian energy businesses and tried to differentiate ourselves from both models," says Mr Newman. Rather than simply generating predictable income by renting the infrastructure assets, AEG hopes to use a large portion of the cash generated to grow the asset base, as costs continue to fall and energy prices rise. This operational model has - according to Mr Newman and chief executive Ram Nandakumar - gone down well with early-stage investors keen to mitigate risk while seeking short-term returns.
