Wind turbine manufacturer Gamesa is all set to bag a contract for building a 100 MW solar power plant for Neyveli Lignite Corporation. Gamesa has emerged the lowest bidder in 500 MW NLC tender. Gamesa has quoted a price for 100 MW. Bidders for the other 400 MW will be asked to match Gamesa’s prices, failing which Gamesa’s contract could be for a higher capacity, NLC’s Chairman and Managing Director, SK Acharya, told BusinessLine. “This is a new model of business,” Acharya said, noting that bidders quote a per-MW price for building the solar plant and running and maintaining it for 15 years. Gamesa India a wholly-owned subsidiary of Gamesa Corp of Spain. But is not present in ‘solar’ anywhere except in India, where it is a relatively new and small player. In October last, when Gamesa announced bagging an order for 130 MW from a renewable energy company called Atria Power, it said it had built 67 MW of solar power projects in India.
The company said it did not wish to comment on the order at this stage. While Acharya refused to go into any details of prices quoted on the grounds that the process of award of contract was still underway, sources in the industry have confirmed that Gamesa quoted under ₹4.5 crore a MW. The industry is aghast at such low quote, for it sets a new benchmark. An industry source, who requested not to be named, expressed misgivings about the terms of the tender, which requires bidders to make a non-refundable deposit of only ₹1.5 crore for any capacity bid. The fear is that if the winning bidder – Gamesa – is unable to execute the project and decides to quit midway, it only stands to lose ₹1.5 crore.
Source:TH
