Evolve Tender Specifications To Boost Indian Floating Solar Sector: World Bank Report

A latest report by the World Bank on the state of India’s floating solar segment said that the country needed to evolve tender specifications to boost the sector. The report mentioned that while India has a 300 GW potential for floating solar, merely 350 MW of the technology could be deployed till now.

The report said that manufacturing related aspects for the key components are not clearly covered in reviewed tenders. It said that the mechanical and chemical properties of the key equipment are not completely covered. 

It said, “Evolve tender technical specifications to meet the key challenges of FSPV (floating solar) and to ensure material longevity for an anticipated 25-year lifetime.”

It also added, “Make tender specifications more technology agnostic to cover a wider range of technologies and types of floater structures, anchoring and mooring. For example, the tenders are currently more focused on HDPE floats, which will limit participation from other technology providers. A wider required definition for performance in tenders will facilitate innovation and allow the industry to learn, develop and mature the technologies.”

The World Bank report also said that the bidders in floating solar system tenders are often given the responsibility of collection of key site daya. The report identified this as a gap. “This not only increases the time for responding to bids, but also leads to different assumptions being taken by the different bidders, which could limit discovery of commercially optimized bids,” the report said.

“Have the bidding authority carry out the preliminary site investigations and make the data available to the bidders. This effort can also be centralized for a cluster of waterbodies to optimize cost of surveys and drive standardisation,” the World bank report on India’s floating solar systems said. 

In India, several public and private entities have now ventured into floating solar in order to cater to the challenges of land scarcity. This has empowered states like Jharkhand and Odisha to boost its energy basket by infusing more solar power in these renewable poor states. Public utilities like SJVN and NTPC have also expanded its solar business by trying their hands with floating solar systems.