Solar mission guidelines amended for batch two

The Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission set an ambitious target of installing and commis-sioning projects, in three phases, to generate 20,000 MW of solar power in India by 2022. The first phase envisages selection and development of a total capacity of 1,000 MW, comprising 500 MW each of solar photo voltaic (PV) and solar thermal power. While the entire 500 MW of solar thermal projects was awarded in the first round of bidding, a total of 37 solar project developers successfully bid for only 150 MW of PV projects.

Making it attractive

The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, through NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam (NVVN), recently issued guidelines for selection of a second batch of PV projects. Key changes brought about under these guidelines are outlined below.

Capacity allocation: A project developer (including its parent, ultimate parent, affiliate and group company) can bid for a total capacity of 50 MW, subject to a maximum of three PV projects with no single project being more than 20 MW. In the first batch a project developer could only bid for 5 MW.

Saurabh Bhasin is a partner at the Delhi office of Trilegal where Arnav Joshi is an associate. Trilegal is a full service law firm with offices in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad and has over 140 law¬yers, some of whom have experience with law firms in the United States, the UK and Japan.