SECI Discovers Rs 2.90/kWh Tariff in 400 MW Round-The-Clock RE Tender; ReNew Power Emerges as Winner

State-owned Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) has discovered a tariff of Rs 2.90/kWh in its tender for Round-The-Clock’ (RTC) supply of 400 MW renewable energy (RE) power to NDMC, New Delhi, and Dadra & Nagar Haveli.

ReNew Power has emerged as the winner under this tariff-based competitive bidding (RTC-I) and won complete 400 MW of capacity at a quoted tariff rate of Rs 2.90/kWh.

On the successful e-RA conducted by SECI, Power Minister, R.K. Singh tweeted “Golden chapter added in IndianRE story, as e-RA for 400 MW RE Projects with Round the Clock (RTC) supply conducted by @SECI_Ltd results in historic 1st year tariff of Rs.2.90/kWh. MNRE makes a new beginning towards firm, schedulable & affordable RTC supply through 100% RE power.”

Furthermore, Anand Kumar, previous MNRE Secretary and the current Secretary to Ministry of Culture, too congratulated SECI through a tweet “Congratulations SECI for discovering the tariff of Rs. 2.90 / kWh under Round the Clock bid.”

The bid submission for SECI’s 400 MW RTC-I RE power supply tender was closed on March 23, 2020, in which total four companies had applied.

All the four bidders were – Greenko, ReNew Power, HES Infra and Ayana Renewables and they applied for the capacity of 400 MW, 400 MW, 100 MW and 50 MW respectively. Thus, SECI received an application for a total 950 MW of capacity and the tender got oversubscribed by 550 MW.

At the time of applying, ReNew Power quoted a price of Rs 2.90/kWh, Greenko quoted Rs 2.91/kWh and others quoted around Rs 4.05/kWh.

SECI set an escalation of 3 percent per annum on the quoted first-year tariff, up to the end of the 15th contract year of the term of the power purchase agreement (PPA).

In February this year, SECI amended the terms of its tender to change the annual tariff escalation from earlier 4 percent to 3 percent. So, effective tariff will be Rs 3.59/kWh depending on the power generation from the project, and other factors.

In October last year, SECI issued RfS for selection of renewable energy developers for “Round-The-Clock” supply of 400 MW renewable energy to the (200 MW) New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) and (200 MW) Dadra & Nagar Haveli (RTC-I).