Ayala Backed Sitara Solar Achieves Financial Closure for 100 MW Rajasthan Project

Sitara Solar, backed by the Philippines based Ayala Solar subsidiary AC Energy and UPC Renewables China Holding, has announced financial closure for its 100 MW project in Rajasthan.

The firm had won the project in SECI’s 750 MW solar auction just over a year back, by bidding at a price of Rs 2.48/KwH. The project was its first major investment in India. The other winners in the auction were Acme Solar, Fortum Solar, and Palimarwar Solar.

With this closure, the firm expects the project to be be online soon, in the first half of 2021 in fact. An interesting aspect of this auction was that all power is being procured for the state of Rajasthan, with the state providing transmission infrastructure  land  availability. That was cited as a key reason why bids had been lower, relatively for this project at the time. It has been a well established trend for overseas firms now to stick to auctions by mostly central government agencies, especially SECI or NTPC< rather than state government auctions, after the fiasco with Andhra Pradesh in 2019.

Sitara Solar has estimated the project cost at US$67 million. The construction of the solar farm started last year.

Sitara Solar has secured a 20-year loan from the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), to be funded through a 75:25 debt-to-equity financing scheme.

The JV between AC Energy and UPC Renewables has about 450MW of projects under development in India, with an initial target of  GW for the region.

UPC Renewables formed companies have developed more than 73 operating wind and solar projects with a total installed capacity of 4,500MW and an investment value of over US$8.4 billion.