Large Indian state owned energy companies such as OIL India, IOCL etc. have periodically made small forays into building very small solar energy plants, but they have done nothing much except generate sound bites. India’s largest capital goods company BHEL had made grandiose plans to build a large megawatt solar wafer, cell and panel manufacturing plant in the then heavy industry minister Praful Patel’s constituency, but nothing came out of that as well. All major PSUs like SJVN, NHPC, NTPC etc. have built small 5-10 MW solar plants without doing anything substantial. Most of these PSUs are extremely cash rich, but like the government companies are passive and inefficient except for one or two. SJVN and NHPC are focused on building hydro power capacities, but have been extremely slow in building those capacities. They have been mostly content in milking their existing facilities. NPTC is one of the better run companies in India with over 40 GW of power generating assets mostly thermal based.

The new Modi government wants all these companies to start building out large solar capacities. This will not only go towards meeting the ambitious 100 GW target for 2022 set out by the PM, but also help in meeting their RPO obligations. Note, as per India’s National Plan on Climate Change, 15% of the energy should come from renewable energy sources by 2020. NPTC going by its current target should have at least 15-20 GW of renewable energy power capacity by 2022. NPTC is come out with a 1 GW tender for building solar farms in Andhra Pradesh and will soon build out 3 GW of solar capacity.

Read more about Advantages of Renewable Energy.

Besides power generating companies, the PMO is also pushing the large state owned oil refiners such as IOCL, OIL, HPCL, BPCL etc. to build solar power capacities. These companies can be easily be pushed into building large solar capacities given their huge revenue and human resource bases.

The world’s largest coal mining company Coal India is also a good candidate to build out large solar farms, given that the company has a giant cash hoard and generates large cash flows each year. In fact Coal India has already tied up with SECI looking to build out 1000 MW of solar capacity in the near future.