Status update of solar policies and allocations across India

Gujarat

Gujarat has been the leader in renewable energy for the past year for India and has now slowed down considerably after establishing itself. The solar programme has brought in its limelight, unprecedented prosperity to the locals of Gujarat, land values have appreciated almost ten times, local employment around solar farms has increased and standard of living has further increased.

The solar park at Charanka has amply demonstrated the possibility of Solar Power projects with the infrastructure being setup in record time for a government based project. Charanka was barren and now commands rates of almost twenty times the original land procurement price of a few years ago.

More than 600MWp+ installation has been claimed by the Gujarat government and more is to come of the total 970MWp allocated. Recently the rooftop program of 5MW in Gandhi Nagar was jointly awarded to Azure and Sunedison at approx. Rs. 11.30 (verified with the developers) with Rs. 3 being pumped back to the rooftop owners. Similar programs are to be carried out for four other cities in Gujarat.

JNNSM

The Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission had a lot of promise when it began but somewhere along the line, the department lost the plot by delaying the 1^st batch and pushing developers to severly under quote each other. However fortune favored developers by allowing prices of PV to crash due to the recession in Europe which allowed most of them to more than break even on their tariffs.

The 1^st batch allocated 650MWp of Solar Projects with a division of 500MWp for CSP and 150 MWp for Solar PV was highly skewed towards large project developers. The current feedback from CSP developers especially ACME has been that the DNI data from public sources has been severely misleading and efficiencies are being impacted to quite an extent.

This has also been in part due to the inadequate resources of validated data for sites in India, with the market developing a number of players claiming to hold accurate information has proliferated. Similarly MNRE has also pushed for ground monitoring from a solar perspective for some locations.

Karnataka

Karnataka did generate some interest in the beginning but fizzled out due to the poor handling by the state renewable nodal agency KREDCL, only recently has the state re-initiated its programme with a small allocation of 80MW with just 20MW allocated to CSP.

List of all RE projects in the state

Due to the paucity of funds at the state discom level, Solar really hasn’t been a priority item

Madhya Pradesh

MP has recently allocated 200MWp of projects to just 4 developers but there are inconsistent reports on the allocations.

We are yet to confirm the final status of allocations

Rajasthan

Rajasthan possessed the most potential for solar in the country and was a favoured destination however seems to now be on the back foot with the recent order to cancel its solar programme as predicted in the original article of last August.

However more than 80% of all projects allocated in JNNSM are to be installed in the state which may seem like a consolation.

Punjab

Not much has changed since the initial installation by Azure of a 2MWp power plant with less than 5 MWp of Rooftop PV & Small Solar Power Generation Programme (RPSSGP) and a couple of 5MW JNNSM projects being installed in the state.

Odisha

Initially kick starting the Odisha solar programme of 25MWp was a bid of Rs. 7 by Alex Solar for 5MWp which has now been allocated the entire capacity of 25MW on offer.

Bihar

Bihar Renewable Energy Development Agency has in principle okayed a few developers for Solar PPAs but there hasn’t been official confirmation

Maharashtra

Mahagenco has allocated the EPC for its 75MW power plant to JUWI and LANCO to meets its RPO obligations and is also looking to build out another plant of 125MW though this is still under process.

Uttar Pradesh

With only a 2MW solar plant operational under the RPGSSP scheme, the state is yet to give importance to a solar policy due to its fiscal issues.

The overall state solar power programme’s have been extremely inconsistent and minimal in its implementation even almost 2 years now into the JNNSM program with small capacity allocations in a few states. All the allocations put together across states can’t match that of either Gujarat or JNNSM.

This proves to an extent that solar as a grid solution is unviable in the long run and the off grid potential needs to be exploited further without the need for government subsidy. I also see an exponential growth phase once costs steady around Rs. 6-7 crores per MWp and efficiencies cross 20% since solar will take over where wind has left off.

[Inset: 600-MW solar array in Gujarat, described as the world's largest to date]

Editor's Note: Ritesh Pothan leads an advisory organization focused on renewable energy projects and also runs two of the largest renewable energy forums on linkedin.com dedicated to the Indian subcontinent.

You can reach him at ritesh@natgrp.net and the forums at Renewable Energy and Cleantech Forum - India as well as Solar Energy Professionals - India.