At the consultation meeting conducted yesterday (23/11/2012) regarding the roll-out of the Tamil Nadu State Policy , the TANGEDCO(Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Company) officials clarified the following points
a. Payment Security will be ensured through a Letter of Credit(LOC) . Since many of the wind farm developers have not received their payments for several months, the off-take risk is the biggest concern among developers.
(The details of the payment security mechanism for the new Rajasthan RFP can be found here.)
b. The bid will be on the basis of a rate contract. There will be a 5% increase in the price of power procured for the first 10 years. Further details awaited.
c. The PPA will be for 20 years.
d. Minimum size of a solar plant will be 1 MW and an upper limit is not proposed as yet.
e. Acquiring land will be the responsibility of the developer.
f. TANGEDCO is confident that solar power plants will not face the power evacuation problems some of the wind projects face since solar resources are much more dispersed than wind resources.
The meeting was attended by more than 500 people in our estimate.
(Update : The official minutes of the meeting is available in the TEDA website here).
Some news items about the meeting can be found below.
1. Energy Alternatives India(EAI) – Click here.
2. The Hindu Businessline – Here, here and here.
3. Business Standard – Click here.
Note : We have started a LinkedIn Forum for sharing news,insights and perspectives on solar specific to Tamil Nadu. The group is updated every day and several stakeholders have already joined the group. I invite you to join the group and share your views there. The link to the group is http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Tamil-Nadu-Solar-4681107