India has bright sunshine for more than 300 days in a year. At national level, we have JNNSM (Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission) and at the State level, most of the State Governments came up with their own solar policies. Gujarat has been ahead of the curve.
As solar power developers, we are facing lot of challenges:
- It is highly capital intensive.
- The domestic supplies are still expensive
- Total Grid parity is still few years away.
- Indian Banks and other financial institutions are not easily coming forward to finance.
- Domestic funds are expensive.
- The Solar Power Purchase Obligations are not yet strictly enforced. Hence the future of RECs (Renewable Energy Certificates) is uncertain.
To overcome these challenges, we are focusing on bringing in both technology and investments from abroad. Some categories of the consumers are already paying tariffs equal to make the solar power financially viable. We are focusing on these consumers to get bankable PPAs.
We wouldn’t like to depend on the Government for the required land, PPAs and other subsidies. We develop each project financially viable on its own. We are also working on ways to supply our customers 24 hour uninterrupted power.
Currently we are working on 300MW solar farms. We are planning to fully commission these solar farms by the end of 2014, in phases.
