Indian state-owned firm the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) has awarded 2GW of solar-plus-storage that will connect to the Inter State Transmission System (ISTS).
In total five projects were awarded capacity, with Reliance NU Suntech, a subsidiary of Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries, receiving the most at 930MW of solar PV and a bidding price of INR3.53/kWh (US$0.041/kWh). The other four bids had a winning price of IR3.52/kWh.
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Other companies awarded capacity in the reverse auction are state-owned power producer National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), renewable energy developers Solarcraft Power India and Hero Solar Energy and Singapore-headquartered engineering firm Sembcorp.
Sembcorp had previously announced it was awarded 150MW of solar PV and 300MWh of battery energy storage systems (BESS). SECI intends to enter 25-year power purchase agreements (PPAs) with the five successful developers.
Alongside the 2GW of solar PV, 1GW/4GWh of energy storage paired with solar PV was also tendered, while 4,520MW of capacity has been shortlisted to enter the competitive solicitation’s auction stage
The tender was launched last summer by SECI, which is administered by the Ministry of Power’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE). SECI sought proposals for build-own-operate (BOO) assets, from which the state corporation would sell energy to Buying Entities that could include electricity distribution companies (‘discoms’), utilities, corporate customers or other offtakers.
Developers’ scope of work would include setting up the transmission infrastructure to connect their power plants to the ISTS. SECI had made the tender technology agnostic in terms of energy storage but required 0.5MW/2MWh of energy storage system technology to be paired with every megawatt of solar PV.
This article was first published on our sister site Energy-storage.news.
