Friday, October 31, 2014: On Tuesday, SunEdison, the globally known solar power developer, has inked a Memorandum of Understanding or MoU with Rajasthan government to install 5,000MW capacity solar power within next five years. The company will invest around Rs 300,000 million for the project.
The new deal states that the state government will make land availability smoother and power evacuation infrastructure will also be provided by the state so that projects are properly implemented to generate the capacity as targeted, as detailed by Pashupathy Gopalan, president and managing director for Asia Operations at SunEdison. Gopalan has also said that they require 25,000 acre land for the project and Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd will collaborate with them in providing all the facilities, TOI reports.
The solar giant has already installed PV capacity of more than 50MW in the state and now the new MoU follows the announcement of the state’s new solar policy, which has set the target of setting up 25GW solar capacity in next few years. The MoU adds, the generated clean energy will be distributed to Solar Energy Corporation of India, NTPC Vidjut Vyaparan Nigam Limited and Power Trading Corporation. Recently, Rajasthan received approval for $152 million loan from Asian Development Bank to develop power transmission network. Solar power developers are very concerned about high transmission and losses’ charges in the state and Gopalan also said that Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje is aware of the issue. The government is likely to think about reducing the charges to attract more investment in the solar sector in the state.
