ONGC, GAIL among cos invited to bid under Solar Mission phase-I
New Delhi   09-Nov-2010

ONGC, GAIL (India), SAIL, and IndianOil are among the companies which have been invited by NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam Limited (NVVN), a wholly-owned subsidiary of NTPC, to submit bids for developing solar projects under the first phase of the National Solar Mission.

Competing with the public sector majors are private players like Lanco, L&T, Punj Lloyd, Essar Power, Welspun Energy, Moser Baer, and Reliance Power. To avoid cartelisation NVVN has individually notified the companies that had made requests for selection (RFS) under the mission.

A senior official told Business Line, “The last date of making the bids is November 16 and winners will be announced on the same day. The project developers offering the best discount on a tariff notified by the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) will figure higher in the pecking order during the allocation of identified projects under the Solar Mission programme.”

The tariff rates notified by the CERC for 2010-11 are Rs 17.91 a unit for photovoltaic (PV) and Rs 15.31 a unit for solar thermal.

“The selection of bidders offering best discount is also the first step towards bringing down the cost of solar power. The tariff will be lower than the CERC notified tariff thus moving towards grid parity,” the official said.

NVVN has been designated as the nodal agency to procure solar power from project developers under the Mission at a tariff fixed by the regulator CERC for the first three years. NVVN, in turn, will bundle four units of thermal power with each unit of solar power to bring down the final cost of power.

RFS have been received for project capacities much higher than what was called for by NVVN, the official said. Requests were received for 441 projects, of which 363 were solar PV and 78 solar thermal. Of the RFS received, 15 per cent have been rejected.

RFS were called for developing 150 MW of solar PV projects with a capacity of 5 MW each and 470 MW of solar thermal projects with a minimum capacity of 5 MW and maximum of 100 MW each.