Leading companies such as Reliance Industries, Tata Power, Adani Solar are likely to bid for contracts under production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for solar PV module manufacturing, the Economic Times mentioned in a report citing senior government officials. The government is expecting a grand response to the programme with bids at nearly four times the 10 GW tender.
Under the scheme, about 18 bids of nearly 40 GW were submitted by companies, including large ones, till Sunday, the financial daily mentioned citing the sources mentioned above. The bids are now scheduled to open on Tuesday.
“We can accommodate maximum 10 GW. Many players are committing to set up fully integrated plants from polysilicon to module against our expectations of beginning with wafers to modules,” the government official told ET.
In April this year, the Union cabinet had approved the production-linked scheme for manufacture of high efficiency solar photovoltaic module scheme with an outlay of Rs 4,500 crore. The incentives are expected to add 10,000 MW of high-efficiency integrated solar PV manufacturing plants and bring direct investment of around Rs 17,200 crore in solar PV manufacturing.
The selection of bidders under the scheme will be made on three parameters — the extent of integration, proposed manufacturing capacity and the performance efficiency of modules, the publication mentioned.
There are four stages in module making, polysilicon, wafers, cells and modules. “Meeting one condition is qualifying, while there will be marks assigned on the other two. For example, if somebody is putting up an integrated plant, he will get 50 out of 50. If he is setting up wafers, cells and modules, he will get slightly less marks. We are allowing minimum integration from cell to module, and only module facility will not work,” the publication quoted the official as saying.
The second parameter is the capacity of the plant. Similarly, marks will also be assigned subject to minimum efficiency of the module for selection.
Bidders will quote PLI requirement for each of the five years post commissioning, based on the assumptions of sales, base PLI rate and local value addition. In case of a tie, whoever claims less PLI will get selected, he said.
