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The Union Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) plans to fine-tune provisions of the solar policy to expedite project implementation, and is also considering extension of concessions for merchant solar projects by taking up their concerns with the electricity regulator, Dr B. Bhargava, a Director at MNRE, said.
Expressing satisfaction at the progress made in implementing solar power projects in the country since the National Solar Mission (NSM) was launched, Dr Bhargava said, “Thus far about 125 MW has been installed, and if the current progress is any indication, we will have an installed capacity of about 600 MW by March 2012, and possibly 2 giga watts (2,000 MW) by March 2013.”
Speaking at Solarcon India 2011, the flagship event hosted here, Dr Bhargava said, “We are confident of achieving these targets as projects across the country, both under the NSM and those encouraged by some proactive States, like Gujarat and Rajasthan in particular along with Karnataka, are at various stages of implementation. The funding issues have also been sorted out. Apart from multilateral lending agencies, Indian banks have begun to fund solar projects, one bank alone (State Bank of India) has funded nine projects,” he said.
“The first 8.5-MW merchant solar power plant has come up in Maharashtra,” Dr Bhargava said. This project, the first solar project that is to be put under the renewable-energy-certificates mechanism, belongs to Jain Irrigation. Several other developers are looking at this strategy.
Batch 2 winners
Dr Bhargava said the process of evaluation of the bidders in the batch 2 of phase 1 is almost over and names of the winning bidders will be sent to the nodal agency, NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam Ltd, in “a few days”. Batch 2, which invited bids for a capacity of 350 MW, has received overwhelming response, he said. “By the end of this month, we expect to finalise the developers and they would soon get letters of allotment. We expect these developers would sign up for power purchase agreements by next month.”
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