Both modules and cells need to be domestically made in India to be able to participate in the 1GW module tender from SECI. Image: Premier Energies.State-owned Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) has launched a tender for 1GW of domestic solar modules from manufacturers in India.
The capacity sought by SECI is divided into two packages of 500MW each, with the bidder allowed to participate in one or both of the packages with the possibility of an increase or decrease of 10% of the quantity, thus the minimum possibly awarded could be of 450MW and the maximum of 550MW.
The tender not only requires the modules to be domestically manufactured but also the cells to be made in India, with the modules needed to be from the List-I of Approved List of Models and Manufacturers (ALMM), which had more than 70 domestic manufacturers with a nameplate annual capacity of more than 22GW among all manufacturers as of 27 February 2023.
Only one type of PV modules (monocrystalline or thin-film) will be accepted per bidder and will require to have the same dimensions.
Bids can be submitted until Thursday 17 August 2023, while the full details of the tender can be read here.
A previous tender held around the same time last year, when SECI was seeking 1.68GW of domestically-made modules, ended up being extended.
Moreover, SECI launched a tender seeking 500MW of firm and dispatchable renewable energy earlier this month to provide power to the distribution companies (DISCOMs). These projects would be on a build-own-operate basis and would be secured via a 25-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with the power sold to utility Punjab State Power Corporation.
The submission deadline for this request for selection (RfS) is slated for Thursday 31 August 2023, with more details accessible here.
Request for Selection around green hydrogen
The state-owned company has launched several RfS around green hydrogen manufacturing and production. Under a similar move done in the past years with building a domestic solar manufacturing industry in India, SECI is seeking for bids of domestic manufacturing capacity of electrolysers.
The capacity offered will be separated into two buckets – the first one based on “any stack technology” and the second bucket based on “indigenously developed stack technology”. The capacity sought for the first bucket is 1.2GW, with a minimum bid capacity of 100MW and a maximum bid of 300MW, and the second one is 300MW.
Deadline to submit bid applications for this Rfs has been set on Tuesday 5 September 2023, with more details on the document available here.
Moreover, SECI’s other RfS involving green hydrogen is looking for an annual production capacity of 450,000 tonnes of green hydrogen divided into two buckets, with the majority of it – 410,000 tonnes – being technology agnostic, while the remaining capacity based on biomass.
