500 MW Gujarat solar tender oversubscribed 4 times

Gujarat Urja Vikas Nigam Limited (GUVNL)’s re-tender of the annulled 500 MW grid-connected solar PV tender has been oversubscribed by almost four times. Technical bids aggregating 1,925 MW have been submitted against the tendered capacity of 500 MW.

September 10, 2018 Preeti Verma Lal

Image: Filpro/Wikimedia Commons

A total of 13 participants have submitted bids, including big players like Azure (500 MW), Aditya Birla (250 MW), Adani (200 MW), Mahindra (200 MW), and Feyman (100 MW).

In February of this year, GUVNL floated the 500 MW tender with a ‘greenshoe’ option, meaning additional capacity could be awarded based on the L1 tariff of this tender. The technical bids received on the back of this were oversubscribed by three times.

However, Gujarat cancelled the auction at the end of March, declining to comment on the reasons why. Industry sources attributed the cancellation to high tariffs.

Gujarat-based Kalthia Engineering & Construction had quoted the lowest tariff of Rs 2.98 (US$0.046) /kWh, but even that was remarkably higher than the tariff of Rs 2.67 ($0.037) /kWh at the previous GUVNL auction, held in September 2017.

Gujarat state tenders are sought after, due to their positive financial position and good payment history. According to the Integrated Rating for State Power Distribution Utilities report, four Gujarat state power distribution utilities have the best ratings of A+.

As of Q1 2018, Gujarat had installed approximately 1.4 GW of solar projects, and had a development pipeline of over half a gigawatt. The state accounts for 7% of the installed utility-scale solar projects in India.

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