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IL&FS Energy Development Co Ltd, the power generation and infrastructure development arm of Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd, proposes to rapidly ramp up its solar power generation capacity.
“After having done about 1,004 MW in wind energy, we now want to ramp up in the solar space. The structuring, and in what way it will be done, is being discussed internally,” Sunil Wadhwa, Managing Director, IL&FS Energy, told BusinessLine .
Win-win situation “We believe there is a good market for selling solar power directly to industrial and commercial consumers. It is a win-win situation where the customers benefit and we are able to diversify our consumer base,” he added.
The company at present has around 740 MW of wind energy projects operational while another 260 MW is under construction and will come online by March 2016.
In the solar power space, it has a 40 MW project in Madhya Pradesh apart from a rooftop solar project for Amity University in Noida.
The company is also developing 5,000 MW of solar parks in Rajasthan in collaboration with the State government, for which 25,000 acres of land is required. Land for two solar parks has been identified, and the acquisition process is on.
“One project is in Badla, which is adjoining the existing government solar park. Another one will come up in Jaisalmer.
“The land for the remaining 3,000 MW will be identified soon,” said Wadhwa. However, the company is yet to decide whether to set up solar power capacity in these parks.
“The joint venture with the State government is to develop the infrastructure of the solar park. We may also set up generating capacity within the park but it also may be somewhere else and it would depend on where the market is available,” he said.
Aggressive tariffs Wadhwa said some of the bids coming for the solar projects these days are ‘a bit aggressive’ on the tariff front.
“With volumes the way they are in India, economies of scale will kick in but solar panel and module prices have bottomed out. There will be more of financial engineering required now,” he said.
Wadhwa added that solar panel and modules costs are unlikely to drop further but efficiencies will increase. “It is now all about how efficiently — how one is able to manage capital and how efficient the modules are,” he observed.
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