Tamil Nadu Solar bidding results – Reaction from stakeholders

Following the opening of the technical bids for allocation of projects under the Tamil Nadu solar policy, reactions from stakeholders have started coming in.
RESolve had reported the opening of the bids live and shared several insights following the bid opening(Click here for the full analysis). Narasimhan Santhanam at Energy Alternatives India had some interesting views points in his blog here. The blog saw several comments related to what Tangedco could do next. One particular comment that I liked from Narsi’s blog is ”While I belong to the majority in criticising most things governments do (many times without even bothering to read the details :-)), let me also take a moment to appreciate TANGEDCO for sticking to its deadlines and completing things on times they promised (at least until now). We might say they have been unreasonable, but according to one Bernard Shaw, the world’s progress apparently  depends on unreasonable people.”
Panchabuta’s report on the bidding can be found here.
Today, in the article titled ”TN solar bidders adopt take-it-or-leave-it stance ” in Business Line, Pashupathy Gopalan, MD of Sun Edison is quoted as follows ” Our view has been that we should bid for whatever best we can and leave it. I don’t see us changing our bid price appreciably.”
Business Line has another article with an interview with Pashupathy Gopalan. In this article, Pashupathy Gopalan ” said many bankers were still not comfortable with TANGEDCO’s payment security system. (The utility has a very poor record of paying its dues — the wind power producers have not been paid their dues for over a year.)”
Yet another article by Business Line, ”Why Tamil Nadu’s solar tender failed to attract more bidders”, identifies two major doubts that resulted in lower number of bids – ”(a) payment security given that the buyer of the power, TANGEDCO, is almost bankrupt (b) availability of grid, because wind power people in the recent past have been unable to sell their power because the grid was not made available to them. Neither issue was addressed adequately by TANGEDCO.”
In Economic Times, the story was titled ”India’s single-biggest solar power tender in Tamil Nadu gets lukewarm response” . Bharat Bhushan Agrawal of Bloomberg New Energy Finance says ”Short period of time and payment risks would have played its part in the Tamil Nadu solar bid process. This is a disappointment given that other bids have been over subscribed though quantum is low.” He also said that since it was a holiday season and there was short period of time, players from Europe and US did not participate.
As a stakeholder, what are your views? Will be great to know!!
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
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