NVVN has announced the list of 30 projects(5 MW each) under grid-connected Solar PV and 7 projects(total 450 MW) under grid-connected Solar Thermal categories.
Of the projects selected under Solar PV, only a few names sound familiar(at least to us). These include Indian Oil Corporation Ltd(IOCL), Karnataka Power Corporation Limited, Mahindra Solar One Pvt Ltd, Azure Power(Raj) Pvt Ltd, SunEdison Energy India Pvt Ltd, Welspun Solar AP Pvt Ltd, Punj Llyod Infrastructure Ltd and Oswal Woolen Mills Ltd.
In the Solar Thermal category, 3 projects have a capacity of 100 MW each(Lanco Infratech Limited, KVK Energy Ventures Pvt. Ltd, and Rajasthan Sun Technique Energy Pvt. Ltd), 3 projects have a capacity of 50 MW each(Megha Engineering and Infrastructures Ltd, Godavari Power and Ispat Ltd and Corporate Ispat Alloys Ltd) and 1 project of 20 MW capacity(Aurum Renewable Energy Pvt Ltd.)
States
Out of the 30 Solar PV projects, 21 projects will be located in Rajasthan. Though it was expected that Rajasthan will get a big chunk of projects, 21 out of 30 is unexpected.The rest of the 9 projects are shared in the following manner
Andhra Pradesh(3 projects)
Karnataka(2)
Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra,UP, Orissa(1 each)
This pattern repeats in Solar Thermal as well – Rajasthan gets 5 out of the 7 projects allocated, with the other 2 being shared between Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh.
Rates
During the first day of the Intersolar India conference in Mumbai, Secretary of MNRE, MR. Deepak Gupta, mentioned that the quotes of the winning bids of these projects as follows
Solar PV:
NVVN reference price : Rs. 17.91/kWh
Lowest winning bid : Rs.11.18/kWh
Average bid : Rs 12.16/kWh
Solar Thermal:
NVVN reference price : Rs. 15.31/kWh
Lowest winning bid : Rs.11.14/kWh
Average bid : Rs 11.48/kWh
Now the real question comes in the implementation part. We have to wait and see if the developers of all the selected projects had done their home work correctly and if all the projects will come online.