Govt. Revises Solar Park Scheme to Ease Land, Evacuation Restraints

The government has announced that it has revised the prevailing scheme for development of solar parks and ultra-mega solar parks in a bid to ease restrictions connected to availability of land and evacuation infrastructure.

Under the new procedures, called Mode-7, SECI will make both government and private land available for successful bidders for setting up projects with the help of state government. The state government would be paid an enablement charge of Rs 0.02 per unit of power being generated in these parks.

This enablement charge would be paid by renewable energy project developers for setting up projects in these lands in addition to any land cost. Also, no fund from Central Financial Assistance (CFA) would be used for the obtaining of land, said the revised guidelines.

“In order to address the two most critical elements such as land and power evacuation infrastructure for solar parks, a new mode is being introduced for development of renewable energy parks (solar/wind/hybrid/other RE parks) through Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI),” supposed Ministry of New and Renewable Energy in a statement.

SECI would act as a Solar Power Park Developer (SPPD) and will get the peripheral power evacuation infrastructure of the parks developed by the External Transmission Development Agency such as transmission utilities.

“Though, the internal infrastructures of the renewable energy park including battery storage will be done by renewable energy project developer at its own cost and would be factored in the tariff to be bid by the project developer,” the ministry held.

The prevailing solar park scheme provides for CFA of Rs 20 lakh per megawatt or 30 per cent of the project cost, either is less, for setting up of both the internal and external evacuation infrastructure.

The ministry alleged that about 16,650 MW capacity is still to be allotted under the scheme and the complete CFA available for this spare capacity under the solar park scheme would now be employed for Mode-7.

Under the new procedures, SECI would also set up a Payment Security Mechanism to make setting up of renewable projects in such parks more striking. The idea is to warrant constant payment to developers and alleviate risk due to default in payments by discoms.