Solar tenders and reverse auctions in India – the way forward: Sunil Jain, CEO, Hero Future Energies
India is a great destination for renewables and all stakeholders should collaborate and work towards achieving India’s renewable target.
New Delhi: The push for renewables continues to remain with the continuation of succession in government and solar bidding is back on track post elections. We believe that the Prime Minister’s vision may witness a huge change in target specially for solar.
SECI’s last two tenders of 1.2 GW and 750 MW were oversubscribed. Of these a total of 1.9 GW has been awarded. MNRE, in its tender trajectory, has a target of 30GW to be tendered during 19-20 of which close to 11 GW is planned to be tendered in the next 3 months.
The latest tender ended with Hero Future Energies bagging the maximum capacity of 250 MW and NTPC, Mahindra Susten, Azure also emerging as winners. Our approach in this bid, be it for land, strengthening our inhouse EPC competences or leverage breakthrough technologies to optimise generation is likely to yield a higher PLF.
This sector lost some of its momentum last year, which was worrying, given that solar power is crucial to the government’s plan to increase the share of renewable energy in India’s installed electricity generation capacity to 40% by 2030.
To achieve its targets, ministry needs to push for allocation of bulk funding for solar parks in the upcoming budget. Solar parks with proper evacuation facilities address some of the challenges faced by developers and attracts higher investment. It should make changes in policies for decentralization and prioritization of evacuation network.
To bolster transmission efficiency, MNRE and CERC have already made progress with right policy steps namely green corridor. Government should also focus on floating solar especially when as a country India is increasingly trying to save water.
The industry faces headwinds on a few fronts especially in terms of access to funding, safeguard duties on modules, payment security issues and land acquisition challenges.
Supportive governmental policies to address these issues such as removal of power sector lending limits, setting up payment security funds or tripartite agreement involving the purchaser, RBI and the state government, single window clearance for all approvals related to material movement, connectivity and land are the need of the hour.
Also, payment irregularities by discoms continue to plague the industry and also a few state authorities still trying to open existing PPAs, creates needless uncertainties in the investment climate.
India is a great destination for renewables and all stakeholders should collaborate and work towards achieving India’s renewable target.
Source: energy.economictimes.indiatimes
