India is seeing a new new record low solar tariff bid that unlike in the past was quoted for a rather small system in a rooftop tender. The Solar Energy Corporation of India Limited (SECI) has published the list of tariffs quoted for its 1,000 MW Solar Rooftop Tender that it floated in December 2016 (see India Launches 1 GW PV Rooftop Tender). The lowest tariff of 2.20 INR ($0.034) per kWh for the so-called RESCO model has been quoted by Mundra Solar PV Limited for a 11.2 MW project on Andaman & Nicobar Island. The highest bid is at 4.59 INR ($0.071) per kWh for a 9.6 MW project in Bihar.
The record low rooftop tariff of 2.20 INR ($0.034) per kWh is even lower than the lowest tariff for large scale PV in India. Recently, ACME Solar won 200 MW of solar power capacity at the auction for Bhadla Solar Park Phase III (see ACME Wins 200 MW At 2.44 INR Record).
The final bidders list published by SECI is accessible on its website. It includes 35 bidders for the so-called CAPEX project with a total capacity of 50.46 MW and 35 bidders for the RESCO model with a combined capacity of 454.16 MW.
The agency has now asked bidders to complete due diligence of the discovered project cost/tariff regarding their decision for state wise price matching.
SECI had originally launched the project with 1,000 MW of rooftop tender capacity. After conducting a detailed GPS and physical survey of government buildings across the country, it brought down the capacity to 500 MW. It then also reduced the benchmark tariff for the tender. For general category states and union territories, it was set at 5.97 INR ($0.092) per kWh and for special category states and islands, it was decided to be 4.42 INR ($0.068) per kWh (see Reduced Benchmark Tariff For SECI Tender).