Monday, December 23, 2013: We had earlier reported how the performance of solar PV plants witnessed a slight downfall in the month of October. Well, the story is no different in Novermber. According to the performance data released by the India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) of the plants commissioned under phase 1 of India’s National Solar Mission (NSM) in November 2013, there is a slight fall in output.
According to a Solar Server report, “Utility-scale plants under phase 1 batch 1 and phase 1 batch 2 of the JNNSM generally reported capacity utilization factors (CUFs or capacity factors) of 16-23 per cent, with only two lower-performing plants out of 41 reporting. This is a slight drop from the 18-24 per cent reported in October 2013, and a further decline from September 2013.”
Coming to the CUFs for plants commissioned under the RPSSGP in previous months, there were lower CUFs of 13-20 per cent. Two plants out of the 46 plants were in the 10-11 per cent range. This time again, solar plants under the Migration Scheme were in trouble with 6 in the 17-23 per cent range but three of the nine reporting CUFs of 2 per cent, 12 per cent and 13 per cent.
There were no “super-performing” PV plants in the report. The highest was the 5 MW PV plant in Rajasthan by Comet Power Pvt. Ltd., with a 23.44 per cent CUF.
