Greater Visakhapatnam Smart City Issues Tender for 15 MW Floating Solar Plant

The Greater Visakhapatnam Smart City Corp (GVSCCL) has issued a tender for the development of a floating solar plant, under the smart city mission. GVSCCL has issued the tender inviting bids for the development of a 15 MW solar plant on the Meghadri Gedda reservoir in Visakhapatnam district.

All interested parties looking to participate in the bidding process should have designed, supplied, installed and commissioned at least 8 MW of grid-connected solar PV projects in the last five financial years, out of which at least one project should have been of 2 MW capacity or above, to be eligible. The average annual turnover of the bidder should not be less than ₹25 crore in the last three financial years.

The project, which will be developed on a turnkey basis by the winning bidder will also include the supply, design, engineering, manufacturing, installation, and commissioning of the project. A bidder will also have to provide operations and maintenance (O&M) for a period of 10 years from the date of commissioning. The last date for bid submission is January 9, 2019, and the techno-commercial bid will open on the same date.

In August, the GVSCCL commissioned its first floating solar plant built on the Mudasarlova Reservoir. The 2 MW system which displaced Kerala’s 500 kW floating solar system as the largest operational solar system in India, was commissioned nearly two months after its deadline.

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The work on the project began in April this year, around the time when GVSCCL issued its second tender for a 3 MW floating solar system to be built on the Meghadrigedda Reservoir, the main reservoir supplying water to the city. In October, ReNew Power, India’s largest RE Independent Power Producer announced that it had won the tender for the Meghadrigedda Project. The company further announced that the project would be financed by GVMC through a grant received from the Asian Development Bank under their Urban Climate Change Resilience Trust Fund.

Prabhat Kumar Mishra, Head, Distributed Solar & Offtake, ReNew Power said at the time, “Floating solar is an emerging technology trend with huge potential and we are proud to be associated with this project at the Meghadrigedda reservoir, Visakhapatnam. We believe floating solar power plants can play a critical role in a country like India which has abundant water bodies.”

While that’s true, floating solar does tend to cost higher than regular solar set ups for obvious reasons. The requirement of high quality buoys to keep the panels afloat being one. Power evacuation, a bane for most solar projects in India so far can be an issue too, although for the massive 150 MW planned floating solar on the Rihand Dam reservoir, evacuation is supposed to be easier by using the existing facilities for the hydro power evacuation.