Punjab gets into the Solar Game

Punjab achieves its 300 MW of Reverse Auction plan for Solar

India’s northern state of Punjab which accounts for a large part of the agricultural production in the country has successfully
completed a 300 MW reverse auction process for solar energy in the state. The usual suspects like Lanco Solar, Azure Power, Essel Infra, Welspun and others have won the majority of the projects which total 250 MW in all. The LOI has been given to the winning bidders and the projects are expected to be installed by next year.

Note different states have had varying rates of success in installing large solar farms, with AP getting only 45% responses due to the low tariffs. Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan too have been facing issues in policy implementation. I have a problem with the whole concept of awarding megawatt solar farms. India’s power transmission infrastructure is in a dismal state and solar energy panels installed over densely populated homes in urban India represent an ideal solution. You don’t have to use the power distribution network where 4550% of the power is stolen or wasted anyway. The state governments should look to strongly promote rooftop distributed solar energy through a transparent red tape free mechanism. But I guess that is a tall order for our corruption and lethargic administration.

Read on GWI Indian States now prefer Solar Rooftop Installations over Ground Farms.

To reduce its massive electricity subsidy burden, the Indian state of Punjab is looking towards solar and biomass energy. Punjab is a major agricultural state, where farmers are highly pampered by all political parties. Supplying free electricity for powering pumps for drawing water has been a state policy for a long time despite its obvious drawbacks such as wastage and overdrawing of water. However convoluted politics keeps increasing the subsidy burden each year with the current year outgo estimated to be more than a billion dollars.
The Indian states have been building large amount of solar capacity through the reverse auction process of giving out solar power farms to developers. The prices have been quite low for these ground mounted farms and Punjab managed to get bids of 13-14c/Kwh for the 250 MW of capacity it gave out to developers.