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The Centre will soon release a policy to provide subsidy support and business assurance to attract companies for setting up integrated solar manufacturing units in the country.
“We had set up a committee under Amitabh Kant, CEO of NITI Aayog, to look into solar manufacturing and they have come up with a proposed policy…We are giving final shape to that it will soon go to the Expenditure Finance Committee of the Ministry of Finance,” said Piyush Goyal, Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Power, Coal and New & Renewable Energy, while addressing the media on his team’s achievements over the last two years.
Integrated solar manufacturing units make everything from ingots, wafers, solar cells and solar photovoltaic modules. “The subsidy support will be given on the basis of a reverse bidding process so those interested in setting up such plants can bid for the least amount of subsidy required to be competitive in the market,” said Goyal.
He added that there will also be a ‘reasonable’ business assurance for five to seven years and it will be given on the basis of a ‘formula pricing’ which will be a part of the policy.
Meanwhile, the government has also started working on reviving the wind power and hydro-energy sectors.
“In wind, there was a resistance earlier to the transparent bidding mechanism. But the industry has now realised that if solar energy can benefit from it, it can help wind power too and now we may look at transparent bidding in wind as well,” said Goyal.
“In hydro, Rural Electrification Corporation, Power Finance Corporation are also working on some kind of mechanism maybe a take-out financing model to restart all the projects that have got stalled across several years,” he added.
The Minister also said that at the State Power Ministers’ conference in June, he will seek their support to bring wind and hydro back on track.
Elaborating on the achievements, Goyal said in the last two years over 57,000 MW of power generation capacity has been added and cumulative capacity now stands at 302,833.20 MW.
“We have added over 50,000 circuit km of transmission capacity which translates to about 69 circuit km a day as compared to 46 circuit km a day between 2012 and 2014,” said the Minister.
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