By Nilesh Patel

Nearly 1,000 MW of eye popping allotment by Gujarat government to private players last year, pundits of renewable electricity market had rejoiced. Now all things seem perfectly black and white. 30 developers out of 68 allocated are now boarded the burning train, I mean, got financial closure already. Destination is 31st December 2011. 

Now ‘can I or I can’t’ question is the big brain twister for them. The complexity of importing material on time, placing it to project site and then start implementation in this rainy season ain’t seem that easy. Topping that, acute labor shortage in Gujarat and untrained subcontractors can make things worse for the developers when they are shooting the deadline. FYI, no one cares about penalty this days, if one can complete before December deadline penalty is not a big issue any more.

But race has begun. Let’s taste the real scenario of few of those developers, by revisiting progress made by them and other new starters.

This deadline threat is really working and if the progress keeps same pace, 200-250 MW for Gujarat is not far and can be doable by December 31st. Better of the government side, now GETCO, (Gujarat Electricity Transmission Company) having very small task force for bringing new infrastructure so fast for this solar project has also taken some serious decision too and are asking all new project starters to get their power evacuation line to be set up by themselves privately and GETCO will provide all material now and labor charges later.

On other note of the news from Gujarat, other than this traditional allotment, GSPC has awarded 5 MW EPC contract to Lanco solar and GMDC has allotted 5 MW EPC tender to TATA BP solar. GPCL 5 MW tender has almost allotted to qualified winner but somehow GPCL is not moving forward even though they too have 31st December deadline.

Flash news (Courtesy: Bharat Vasandani): 100% financial closure by JNNSM phase I solar PV project developers. Postmortem reveals tweaking the basic rule of financial closure by JNNSM. PPA holders who were not able to provide bank term sheets were asked to give in writing that they will undertake the responsibility of financial closure. And this was counted as financial closure.

Anyway it’s much awaited rainy season in Gujarat. Let’s celebrate the season with having hot and spicy bhajiya with Gujarati sweet tea.

Till then… take care.

Nilesh Patel is a project consultant for solar PV and solar thermal power generation. He owns business Movya Consultancy (www.movya.com) dealing in project consultancy, government liaison, allotment, signed PPA/ Equity trading and Land banking. He is also an independent freelancer who expresses his understanding of current issues.