Hevel’s 15 MW project in Russia’s Saratov region nears completion

Russian solar module producer and project developer Hevel Solar, a joint venture between Russian industrial conglomerate Renova Group and nanotechnologies provider JSC Rusnano, has built around 50% of its 15 MW solar plant in the Saratov region, southern Russian, and has planned to connect it to the grid within one or two months.

According to a press release from the regional government, the solar facility, which is being built by the company’s unit Avelar, has been visited by the governor of the Saratov region Valery Radaev.

The 1.5 billion RUB ($25.3 million) project is located in the Pugachevsky district. Avelar started construction on the facility in May 2016. The director general of Avelar said that the company is planning to build another two PV plants in the Saratov region and that, overall, the capacity of its three PV projects, which is now 45 MW, will be expanded to 100 MW.

The Russian company has been busy over the last couple of years, as it looks to become a force in both the manufacturing side of the solar PV industry and the project development side. In 2015, it announced that it was planning to build more than 500 MW of solar projects by the end of 2020.

In early July, Hevel also announced it had doubled its solar module production capacity at its Novocheboksarsk facility to 160 MW with the addition of heterojunction solar module lines. The extended capacity is enough to meet 50% of Russian domestic solar demand, Hevel Group said, extending the firm’s stranglehold of the Russian PV market.