GUVNL’s 500 MW Solar Auction Winners

ABREL SPV 2 (Aditya Birla Renewable Energy), Hinduja Renewables Energy, and state owned SJVN were declared the winners in Gujarat Urja Vikas Nigam’s (GUVNL) auction for 500 MW capacity of solar projects under Phase XIV. The winners quoted a price of Rs 2.30 per unit, with SJVN quoting Rs 2.31/unit or kW. While ABREL and Hinduja Renewables won the full quantity bid for, SJVN was allotted 80 MW of the 200 MW it had placed bids for.

The prices can be considered very attractive considering the fears around escalations due to the new duty regime and other inflationary costs. The Gujarat factor has also played a role, with GUVNL increasingly building a solid reputation on approvals and payments.

Floated by GUVNL in April this year, the tender comes with a greenshoe option of a further 500 MW the state entity will declared further capacity allocations and possible winners soon.

While Aditya Birla Renewables won 300 MW, Hinduja Renewables Energy won 120 MW and  SJVN the remaining  80 MW. The new price of Rs 2.30 is also practically the same as the winning price of Rs 2.29  that was obtained at the last solar auction results announced in March this year by GUVNL. SJVN and Hinduja Renewables had won in that too, along with Fortum and UPC Renewables.

Winning bidders are expected to deliver energy at the Gujarat Energy Transmission Corporation (GETCO) periphery. Successful bidders will be responsible for getting the grid connectivity with GETCO or the central transmission utility (CTU). All responsibilities related to approvals, land acquisition are the responsibility of the bidders. Being a non solar park tender, smaller parcels are also allowed, in that the full allocated capacity does not necessarily have to be built at one contiguous site .

Thus, even existing grid-connected wind farms can be used for sites subject to the availability of spare capacity for renewable energy integration at corresponding GETCO or CTU substations.

As usual, Gujarat Energy Development Agency (GEDA) is the state nodal agency for the project/s to help and facilitate the relevant approvals and coordination with the state transmission entities.

In the past three months, besides the solar auctions, GUVNL has also been active for wind projects, bidding out for 500 MW of wind energy projects last month.