The cost of solar will be Rs7.49 /kWh by 2012 and the journey towards grid parity has received significant boost. The journey was accelrated by French project developer Solaire Direct’s astonishingly low bid in the recently concluded aggresive bidding for project allotment under JNNSM batch II under first phase.

The allocation of solar PV projects in Phase-1 of Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM) is done in two batches over two financial years – 2010-2011 and 2011-2012. Solar PV projects of 150MW aggregate has already been allotted in FY 2010-11 as a part of batch I of JNNSM phase I and those projects are already on their way getting commissioned. Allotment for the remaining 350 MW Solar PV Projects is carried out through the second batch for which an aggregate of 210 proposals were received by NVVN during the month of October 2011. Request for Proposals (RfPs) have been issued to shortlisted bidders under JNNSM Phase I Batch II on 17th November 2011. The last date & time for submission of duly filled in RfP was till 14.30Hrs on 2nd December 2011 and the 180 bids that were received by NVVN were opened on same day at 15.00 Hrs.

The interest for setting up of solar PV projects under JNNSM phase I was very high among the investors during the batch I where a total of 343 applications totaling to 1715 MW were submitted against requirements for 30 projects for an aggregated 150MW allotment.  The fierce competition observed in batch I still continued in the second batch too which is evident from the fact that competition was nine times the selection.

Similar to the first batch, the selection of projects under batch II of JNNSM phase I were through reverse bidding to select only 20 bidders, with winner being the company that can offer highest discount on the base price of Rs. 15.39/kWh.

The winning bids for solar PV under batch II of JNNSM phase I varied from Rs. 7.49/kWh to Rs. 9.41/kWh, at an average bid price of Rs. 12.15/kWh. It is to be noted that in batch I, the range varied from Rs. 10.95/kWh to Rs. 12.76/kWh with an average bid price of Rs. 12.15/kWh.

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Increase in size per project from 5MW to 20 MW, higher allocation possibilities per company for up to 50MW and the significant drop in module prices to less than $1.00/Wp, this round of bidding witnessed participation from larger companies with aggressive pricing

Fierce competition to get the project allotted was obviously expected, as further allocations for solar under the central government scheme might not happen for the next 2-3 years. However extremely aggressive efforts in order to ensure allocation, came as a wave of shock and surprise to the renewable energy industry. It is worthwhile mentioning that the highest discount offered in the batch I of JNNSM by Camelot Enterprises Pvt. LTd., of about 39% and the lowest discount offered in the second batch by Green Infra was almost equal in percentage terms.

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Some key observations from above bid results:

24 out of 27 projects are from Rajasthan which is a more than 85% and this is way ahead of the first batch where close to 70% of the projects allotted were for Rajasthan. This is however not surprising given the fact that 145 proposals out of the 210 received by the NVVN under the batch II of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission, were for Rajasthan according to reports from Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation. Developers have a strong interest in Rajasthan mainly because of the allotment of land on concession for them and strong transmission network as well as the availability of sunlight throughout the year. Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu along with Andhra Pradesh have one projects each though the number of projects from Tamil Nadu was 12 and Andhra was 20 and Maharastra was 19.

There were eight companies who submitted bids for the complete 50 MW – Dahanu Solar Power, Deepak Cables (India) Ltd, Green Infra, M.S. Power Gen Lab, Neel Metals Products Ltd, Omega Solar Projects Pvt Ltd., Mahindra Solar (along with Kiran Energy) and Welspun. Of these, Welspun and Mahindra Solar were able to make a clean sweep of all the 50MW while Green Infra managed to get 35MW allotted for them.

Big names like Acme Tele Power, HPCL, Surana Ventures, IL&FS, NMDC, Punj Lyodd, Ramky Enviro Engineers Ltd., Juwi solar etc were some of the bidders according to NVVN and it was surprising to see that they were not able to emerge as winners. Yet another surprising observation was that 44 bidders including big names like Punj Lyodd, Ramky Enviro Engineers Ltd, Juwi Solar etc., offered no discount and submitted their bid at base price which was an indication of the lack of preparation to face the high voltage competition.

Developers who managed to secure projects in both the rounds of bidding for solar PV under the JNNSM phase I were Azure Power (5MW in batch I + 35 MW in batch II), Mahindra Solar (5MW in batch I and 30 MW in batch II) Sai Sudhir Energy (5MW in batch I and 20MW in batch II) and Welspun (5MW in batch I and 50MW in batch II). While IOCL was the only PSU who bagged a 5MW under the first batch, GAIL was the PSU this time to get a project allotted (5MW) in this batch after having submitted a bid for Rs 9.32.

Few developers (CCCL Infrastructure Limited, Newton Solar Pvt. Ltd., Oswal Woollen Mills Limited., and Punj Lyodd) who successfully got project allotment in the first round of bidding during the previous year were not able to emerge as winners in this round due to the increase in the aggressiveness in the competition. Sunborn Energy, who failed to have an allotment last time around, managed to bag a 5MW after offering a discount of about 42% from the base price.

While it is usually understood that the scale of a project will have a favorable influence on the costs, the JNNSM batch II results did not echo the same. From the results, it seemed that scale has no relevance with costs and companies quoted varying numbers irrespective of the project capacity. The average bid price for a 5MW projects was Rs 8.63 /kWh while it increased to Rs 8.83/kWh for projects of 10MW capacity and a further increase of Rs 8.95/kWh was the observed average for 20MW projects. The numbers of successful 5MW projects were 4 and the number of successful 15MW project was 3. There were 10 successful projects each in 10MW and 20MW size.

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