A Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) tender for 750MW of PV capacity at the Bhadla Solar Park in Rajasthan has been massively oversubscribed, with roughly 8.75GW worth of technical bids received.
Jasmeeet Khurana, associate director, consulting at Bridge to India, told PV Tech the forthcoming auction is expected to be “extremely competitive” and given the high irradiation levels at Bhadla – some of the highest in the country – the tariffs could even touch another new low. However, the actual e-auction date has yet to be announced and can take around 45 days, said Khurana.
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Only last week, the low prices seen at Rewa were trumped by Solairedirect’s winning bid of INR3.15/kWh (US$0.049) for 250MW(AC) in Andhra Pradesh. For this new low, Bridge to India pointed to a recent lull in solar tenders and the bighly bankable utility NTPC coming towards the end of its current tendering round.
For the upcoming Bhadla auction, there are two bidding segments: 500MW and 250MW in two different solar parks.
The solar park infrastructure for a 500MW park is being built by IL&FS. The bids received for this reached at least 5.5GW. An unnoficial list of the players submitting technical bids is as follows:
| Developer | technical bid (MW) out of 500MW |
|---|---|
| Torrent | 300 |
| Atha Group | 100 |
| Aditya Birla | 200 |
| Spring | 200 |
| Adani | 300 |
| Shapoorji | 400 |
| Mahindra | 200 |
| Fortum | 100 |
| Softbank | 500 |
| Welspun | 200 |
| Rattan India | 100 |
| Orange | 200 |
| Hero | 300 |
| Alfanar | 500 |
| Lightsource | 100 |
| Solairedirect | 300 |
| IL&FS | 100 |
| Renew | 500 |
| Acme | 200 |
| Duroc (EDF) | 100 |
| JBM | 100 |
| Sembcorp | 200 |
| Azure | 200 |
| Mytrah | 100 |
The SECI Bhadla tender also involves another 250MW park, the infrastructure of which is being built by Indian conglomerate Adani.
An unofficial list of the players submitting technical bids for this 250MW segment is as follows, with roughly 3.25GW in total:
| Developer | Technical bid (MW) out of 250MW |
|---|---|
| Atha | 100 |
| Torrent | 100 |
| Maheshvari | 50 |
| Spring | 100 |
| Adani | 250 |
| Mahindra | 100 |
| Fortum | 100 |
| Softbank | 250 |
| Welspun | 100 |
| Trina | 50 |
| Philon | 50 |
| Natems | 50 |
| Rattan India | 50 |
| Orange | 50 |
| Canadian Solar | 250 |
| Alfanar | 250 |
| Solairedirect | 200 |
| IL&FS | 50 |
| Renew | 250 |
| Acme | 50 |
| Combronne (EDF) | 50 |
| JBM | 50 |
| FRV | 200 |
| Sukhbir Agro | 50 |
| Sembcorp | 200 |
| Azure | 100 |
| Mytrah | 150 |
It is worth noting that Renew Power, Alfanar and Softbank were the only three firms aiming for a full 500MW and 250MW capacity in both segments of the tender.
The tender had been postponed several times since November last year.