Wednesday, January 22, 2014: The Indian Prime Minister has given instructions for advancing the planned commissioning of 100,00 Megawatt (Mw) of solar power generation capacity to 2027. This is a further to the originally envisaged target of 2031. This new long-term target will be announced soon.
As cited on business-standard.com, on Tuesday the government had bids from 68 companies, which included Tata Power, Moser Baer, Welspun, Azure Power, Jakson Power and KSK Energy, for the setting up of 2,170 Mw capacity projects in the second phase of the mission. This is three fold the proposed 750 Mw which is going to be offered at a fixed rate of Rs 5.5 per unit. The highest bidders were Azure Power (200 Mw), Welspun (160 Mw) and ILF&S Energy (100 Mw).
The Prime Minister’s Office has requested Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) and the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) to provide next week presentations on the blueprint of the strategies for implementing the plan that could attract investment exceeding Rs 5-6 lakh crore.
Prime Minister’s Principal Secretary, Pulok Chatterjee is leading the entire initiative. MNRE had before worked out the 2031 plan and the PM has now asked for an aggressive target of 2027. This will now be possible as the grid-parity for solar power is going to be attained by 2018, as informed by an executive involved in the discussions reported to Business Standard.
As part of the plan, BHEL will be establishing integrated facilities for manufacturing equipment across the value chain, from polysilicon wafers to photovoltaic cells and modules that will capture sunlight light for conversion into electricity. The first 500-Mw capacity factory is being built and will begin production in 18 months.
