Solar power developers have evinced keen interest in putting up projects in Karnataka under the ‘renewable energy certificate' (REC) scheme. Over the last three weeks, Karnataka Renewable Energy Development Ltd (KREDL) has received applications for setting up projects totalling to 250 megawatt (MW).
“All these applications are being processed and projects will be sanctioned in about 20 days,” Mr N.S. Prasanna Kumar, Managing Director, KREDL, told Business Line today. “The REC mechanism is gaining a huge market,” he added.
Under the REC scheme, producers of renewable energy who do not opt for the preferential feed-in tariff get tradable generation-based certificates. The certificates could be bought by specified ‘obligated entities' who are either specified consumers or electricity distribution companies.
Mr Kumar had recently announced that KREDL would invite projects with a total capacity of 200 MW under the REC scheme of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE).
This is apart from the feed-in tariff based programme of the Karnataka Solar Policy for encouraging developers to set up projects worth 350 MW by 2016.
Indeed, as part of that programme, KREDL had floated a tender for setting up projects with a total capacity of 80 MW. Twenty two companies had applied for setting up projects when the bids closed on November 24, 2011.
STAY ON TENDER
However, the State Energy Department recently placed a stay on the tender process for the project following complaints by few developers.
“We had filed a petition on Monday to vacate the stay and we expect it any moment now,” Mr Kumar said.
“We are very much behind the project; we are firm and will see to it that the project takes off at the earliest,” he added.
The issue was that KREDL should have followed e-tendering procedure for the bidding process for companies to participate in the Karnataka Solar Mission.
“There are no grounds for the stay. KREDL is not one of the companies that had opted for following the e-tendering process for the 80 MW of tendering. Even NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam (NVVN) under the National Solar Mission, which has done about 1000 MW, has not done e-tendering,” Mr Kumar pointed out.
“Many companies would like to apply in the last moment and it is difficult to upload huge documents online, so we had not adopted the e-procurement,” he added.
Though the bids closed on November 24, the bid documents weren't opened as the tendering process for the National Solar Mission was on and KREDL wanted to wait for those to close before the allocation of projects under the State solar policy was made.
“Once this issue is cleared, the technical bids will be opened, and we will open the financial bids two days after that. We hope that this can be started in a week's time,” Mr Kumar said.