India Proposes Rules for 9 Gigawatts of Solar Plants by 2017

By Natalie Obiko Pearson, Bloomberg
December 5, 2012 

 

MUMBAI -- India released a draft policy with the goal of building 9,000 megawatts of grid-connected solar plants by 2017, more than eight times its current capacity.

Plans include auctioning 1,650 megawatts of photovoltaic capacity by the central government in the next financial year, grants to cut project costs and loosening curbs on the purchase of equipment from overseas, according to the draft published on the website of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy.
The policy would for the first time fund the solar industry with direct grants covering as much as 40 percent of the upfront cost of building projects. That model has previously been used to build roads, ports, railways and fossil-fuel plants in India.

This “will certainly increase investment in solar energy in India,” Mohit Anand, a senior consultant at New Delhi-based advisory firm Bridge to India Pvt., said today by e-mail.

Developers including Leon Black’s Apollo Global Management LLC-backed Welspun Group and billionaire Vinod Khosla’s Sunborne Energy Holdings LLC have so far built 1,045 megawatts of solar capacity and cut average costs of photovoltaic power 51 percent since India began its so-called National Solar Mission in 2010. The program has sought to drive down the cost of solar power to the level of other forms of grid-supplied electricity by 2017.