The developers keen to take a slice of India‘s most ambitious public tender gathered in Hyderabad this morning (Friday) to learn more details about the state of Telangana‘s 2 GW reverse-bidding auction.
With India as a whole having installed only around 3.5 GW of solar to date, the nation's newest state last week announced plans to take solar's share of power generation to almost half of the 5.7 GW capacity listed in an appendix to the request for selection document published last Wednesday.
The 2 GW tender, which follows a hugely oversubscribed 500 MW allocation late last year, has allocated a maximum power price of INR6.45/kWh ($0.104/kWh) for projects smaller than 8 MW in size the same level as the lowest bid tendered in last year's exercise, by U.S. thin film giant First Solar.
For projects of 8 MW and larger, the ceiling under which developers will vy for the lowest power price will be INR6.32/kWh ($0.10/kWh), reflecting the fact last year's 500 MW tender prompted 1.85 GW worth of generation capacity.
The state, which was separated from the state of Andhra Pradesh of which Hyderabad is also the capital as India's 29th state on June 2, has allocated 500 MW of capacity for smaller projects with 8 MW-plus schemes making up the remainder.
Nalgonda district is the glittering prize
The minimum project size is 2 MW, in line with the capacity listed for the small sub-stations at Dubbak, Khajipur, Chittapur and Habsipur, in the Medak district.
The maximum project size is determined solely by available evacuation capacity and the prize First Solar and other big players will be eyeing up is a 450 MW allocation in the Nalgonda district which offers the largest slice of available capacity, at 600 MW for the whole district. The Smallest district is Rangareddy South, with 100 MW of available capacity.
After today's pre-bid meeting in Hyderabad, bids have to be in by May 15, giving developers barely time to read the 97-page request for selection document issued by the Southern Power Distribution Company of Telangana Ltd and its Northern counterpart.
Prospective bidders will note the state reserves the right to alter the terms of its request for selection, and its 25-year PPAs, by April 24.
Once PPAs are signed, developers are expected to have projects operational within a year by July 21, 2016 and incentives will be offered for earlier completions.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.