India eyes 15 GW with revised Solar Mission batch - report

Oct 17, 2014 - The Indian government plans to boost to 15 GW the target for photovoltaic (PV) capacity additions under the second batch of the National Solar Mission’s Phase II.

The capacity will be installed in three tranches of 3 GW, 5 GW and 7 GW, the Hindu said on Friday. The three tranches will be carried out between fiscal 2014/15 and fiscal 2018/19.

India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) previously aimed to add 9 GW of solar capacity under the Solar Mission’s Phase II by 2017.

The 3 GW of projects to be developed as part of the first tranche will be implemented by NVVN, a unit of state-owned NTPC Ltd (BOM:532555). The first tenders will target 1 GW of grid-connected solar parks in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Comments and suggestions for this portion of the tranche are welcome by the end of October, according to the report.

As much as 250 MW of the planned 1-GW Tranche 1 will be subject to India’s domestic content requirements. According to the tender’s rules, each project will be required to have a capacity of 50 MW, while a single bidder will be able to take part with as many as five proposals. Winning bidders will be awarded power purchase agreements (PPAs) by NVVN, with the tariff to be set through a reverse bidding process. The solar power will be bundled with coal power.

Allocation for Tranche 1 of the scheme is slated to begin in December.

Under the first batch of Phase II, launched in January, India tendered 750 MW of capacity. The solar power price was INR 5.45 (USD 0.09/EUR 0.07) per kWh and the projects were supported through viability gap funding (VGF).

(INR 100 = USD 1.625/EUR 1.271)

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