Tender Issued for 200 MW Projects across 10 Talukas in Karnataka

The Karnataka Renewable Energy Development Limited (KREDL) after overtaking Tamil Nadu to become the country’s most operationally successful renewable state, has tendered for 200 MW of grid-connected solar photovoltaic projects to be developed across 10 talukas in the state.

The overall capacity has been equally distributed into ten individual projects worth 20 MW solar capacity for each taluka. Every bidder will need to quote a minimum of 20 MW for the taluka they want to develop their project in, according to the guidelines. However, bidders will also be permitted to bid for the entire capacity of the project at 200 MW or for as many numbers of talukas in full capacity i.e. 20, 40, 60.., 200.

The selected talukas for the project are Mundargi, Gajendragad, Lakshmeshwar, Savanur, Haveri, Kushtagi, Maski, Kuragodu, Gurmatkal and Hanur. Previously, the KREDL had also issued a similar tender worth 860 MW of solar projects back in 2017 to be developed across 43 talukas in the state. As a part of the state’s phase – V policy to allocate 1,200 MW of solar projects across 60 talukas.

The pre-bid meeting has been scheduled for 14 August, 2018 to address the concerns of all interested bidders, regarding the project guidelines. The last date for submission of technical bids is September 7, 2018 and the project completion timeframe is 18 months from the date the Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission (KERC) approves the power purchase agreement (PPA) with the winning bidders. The power will be sold exclusively to BESCOM for a period of 25 years from the date of completion of the project. 3 of the 10 projects will be developed on the Build-Own-Operate (BOO) basis, and the timeframe for that too has been set at 25 years.

Karnataka has over 5.1 GW of large-scale solar installations and the country’s biggest solar project pipeline worth over 2 GW in capacity, making it India’s leading renewable state. But, recent land ownership issues and safeguard duty impositions which forced the KREDL to issue a project tender thrice have slowed the pace of developments. The response to this new tender remains of high interest across the industry to gauge the impact of the safeguard duty on the country’s biggest solar state.