BENGALURU: Solar energy developers have protested to the ministry of new and renewable energy against the Karnataka government for delaying clearance of land acquisition and using that as a reason to deny them payments for power supplied.
The developers are not being paid because they haven’t received clear titles to the land they acquired for the projects, the National Solar Energy Federation of India wrote to the ministry. ET has seen a copy of the letter. The developers won contracts for 920 MW of projects in Karnataka in a Solar Energy Corporation of India auction in June 2016.
Solar projects need vast stretches of land to be set up, with 1 MW typically requiring about six acres.
The big winners in the auction were Acme Solar, which won 200 MW, Hero Future Energies (160 MW) and Ahmedabad-based Parampujya Solar (350 MW). The land acquisition is pending clearance under Section 109 of the Karnataka Land Reforms Act, which, ironically, was amended in 2014 to make it easier to convert agricultural land and enable it to be used for industrial purposes.
Officials of Karnataka Renewable Energy Development, the state’s nodal agency for renewable energy, did not take calls when ET sought their comments on the land clearance delays.
With a deadline of September 2017 and the land acquisition clearance taking time, an empowered committee of the state government allowed the projects to go ahead.
However, a clause in the agreement stated that while a developer is allowed to feed the grid, payment would be made only after showing “clear title and possession of land through direct ownership or sub-lease agreement… Payment for such power can only be made 30 days after the provisional commissioning…”
The federation expressed fears that loans taken by developers to set up projects would turn bad unless they start getting paid for the power supplied. It urged the ministry to intervene and either delink payments from formal commissioning of projects or provide commissioning certificate without land acquisition clearance.
Source: economictimes.indiatimes
