As part of India’s relentless drive towards solar PV deployment, the government has been promoting schemes for rooftop solar installations, with none so wide reaching as the 500 MW rooftop solar auction that was launched in April 2016. Now that the bids have all come in, SECI has released a list of the winners within the scheme, which proves that prices have been continuing to fall.
The bidding was open to companies for projects across all Indian states and territories under CAPEX and RESCO models. Within the list of auction winners, prices and locations have been included, however, detailed capacity information has not, which means that it is unclear exactly how much PV capacity has been awarded.
Amongst the biggest winners were Hero Solar Energy Pvt, who won projects in 13 states, and Bosch Limited that won projects across 11 states. Some of the winners were only awarded projects in a single location.
The lowest price entered amongst the winners was Rs. 3 (USD0.0442) per kWh, which is a record low, while the highest was Rs. 6.17 (USD0.0909) per kWh. Of course, the nature of the projects and their locations can account for the great divergence in prices. Offering further analysis, Mercom Capital outlined that SECI had tendered a total of 1,500 MW of rooftop solar in 2016, which is a huge figure, and will hopefully all be installed.
By Baishakhi Dutta
