- Karnataka Renewable Energy Development Ltd. allocates 20MW of solar thermal and 60MW of solar PV under the Karnataka solar policy
- Lowest winning bid was submitted at a tariff of INR7.94/kWh
- CSP loses out to PV on account of project size allocation by KREDL
The Karnataka Renewable Energy Development Ltd. (KREDL) has announced the ten winners of the solar bidding it held in November 2011 under the Karnataka solar policy. The KREDL had floated tenders for 80MW worth of solar projects under the Karnataka solar policy on August 9th 2011. The bidding process for these projects was supposed to be closed on November 24th 2011. The winning bids, out of a total of 22 submissions, were not announced due to a legal complication (refer to BRIDGE TO INDIA’s April 2012 edition of the India Solar Compass). Due to the delay in announcements, the developers were given a chance to re-submit their bids.
The original capacity to be allocated was 30MW of solar thermal and 50MW of solar PV, but as bids for only 20MW solar thermal capacity had been received, the excess 10MW has been allocated to solar PV.
The lowest bid, which stood at Rs. 7.94/KWh, was submitted by Helena Power Private Limited (allotted 10MW PV) and the highest successful bid at Rs. 8.50/KWh was submitted by Welspun Solar AP Private Limited (allotted 7MW PV).
Other successful companies are Sunborne Energy Services India Private Limited (10MW CSP), Atria Power Corporation Limited (10MW CSP), Jindal Aluminum Limited (10MW PV), ESSEL Infrastructure Limited- Gulbarga (5MW PV), ESSEL Infrastructure Limited- Badami (5MW PV), GKC Project Limited (10MW PV), United Telecoms Limited (3MW PV) and Sai Sudhir Energy Limited (10MW PV). The solar thermal projects need to be commissioned within 30 months of signing the PPA and solar PV projects will get a period of 18 months for commissioning.
Solar thermal allocations saw very limited interest and even the stipulated capacity of 30MW could not be allocated. This can be attributed to the project size that the KREDL was offering for solar thermal technology. A plant size of 10MW or less is not the best business model for CSP solar power. That is also the reason that the Indian National Solar Mission had offered a minimum plant size of 50MW for CSP.
