Tuesday, October 21, 2014: Keeping in line with their promise, the Narendra Modi-led Indian government has decided to increase solar power generation target of the National Solar Mission and in the process, guidelines of the mission have also been revised for fresh capacity allocation. The revised target says 15GW solar power will be added by 2019 first quarter and the first of the auctions will involve 1,000MW capacity. View the revised guidelines’ document here.
Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has released the revised guidelines for auction of solar photovoltaic power projects. The original National Solar Mission target was 9GW by 2017 and additional 10GW by 2022. Presently India has solar power capacity under 2.7GW. The first 1,000MW capacity target of the first auction will be met through a solar park or UMSPP (ultra mega solar power project) in Andhra Pradesh and similar projects of 500-1,000MW are expected in next few months. Agreements are already signed between states like Punjab and Telangana with Solar Energy Corporation of India to set up such projects.
The first 1,000MW solar power capacity will come with 500MW thermal power and will be sold to power utilities in Andhra Pradesh. This mode of power sale will reduce electricity cost per unit and power utilities will be able to buy solar power and conventional power from a single body only. While project developers can bid for maximum 50MW per project, a company can bid for up to 250MW. A reverse auctioning will select the developers. The revised guidelines also result in reduced proportion of capacity which will be commissioned through domestically manufactured PV modules. The revised solar power generation target has been kept in line with the target of 100GW renewable energy capacity to be installed before the end of this decade. The government has also set a target of adding 10GW wind energy per annum. Currently, India’s total renewable energy capacity is of 32.5GW.
