Pashupathy Gopalan, who heads the Asia-Pacific operations of the US-headquartered renewable energy major SunEdison, has strongly defended low solar tariffs. He points out that companies such as Fortum and Engie, the top two winners of the recent NTPC-bids, are large global companies that know what they are doing.

“Nobody has the right to unnecessarily discredit others,” Gopalan said in the wake of widespread criticism that companies bid irresponsibly to win solar projects.

Finnish company Fortum created a sensation last week by quoting a tariff of ₹4.34 a kW h to put up a 70 MW solar plant and sell power at that price. SolaireDirect, owned by French energy major Engie, won a 140-MW project in the same bid, quoting ₹4.35. SunEdison itself had in November secured a 500 MW project bidding ₹4.63, a record broken by Fortum last week.

“We are not talking about companies that do not know energy,” Gopalan told BusinessLine over the phone from London.

Many variables in play

Observing that “solar gives many, many knobs to play around with”, he said companies take different views on a number of variables — module prices, currency movements and the economy — when they submit bids.

He recalled that when SunEdison won a 200 MW project in a Tata Power bid in September 2014, quoting ₹5.96 a kWhr, “people were throwing rocks at me”. Today, the same price would be considered extremely attractive, he said.

Asked if SunEdison was selling solar assets in India, Gopalan said the company had always followed such a business model. On the buzz in the market that SunEdison was in talks with Japan’s SoftBank to sell the 500 MW it won in Andhra Pradesh last November, Gopalan said he could not be specific, but added that SunEdison was talking to many prospective investors for practically every asset it has.

He likened the business model to that of a real estate developer, who constructs buildings and sells them. “Does anybody ask DLF why it sells a building,” he posed.

Noting that there was practically no difference between a company selling equity to investors and SunEdison selling a project to raise funds, he said where the power purchase agreement allows a bidder to bring in a partner, “I am within my rights and I will do that.”

Asked if SunEdison was palming off risky projects to investors and running away, Gopalan said it was naïve to assume that the buyer would not know what he was paying for.

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