The revised solar policy announced by the State government and the fixing of tariff by the TNERC for domestic and high-tension generators have come as a boost to revive solar projects that had reportedly been stalled for a few years.
The classification of more than 151 kilowatt under the category of generators with no network charges would help even small landholders put up solar plants. Against this backdrop, the State is set to see several solar projects coming up.
One of the country’s leading renewable energy companies, Leap Green Energy, is set to enter the solar market in a big way and is known to have confirmed a huge investment of ₹1,500 crore in Tamil Nadu in the renewables, storage and green hydrogen sector.
The company, based in Coimbatore, has drawn up plans for a bouquet of renewable projects comprising wind, solar and battery storage for this financial year, according to Dev Anand Vijayan, founder and chief executive officer of Leap Green Energy.
Rajeev Karthikeyan, the founder and managing director, had recently disclosed the company’s plans to enter the electric vehicle charging project. Unlike other such projects, the one proposed by the company is holistically designed to be in a greenway, using hybrid renewable power, artificial intelligence and energy storage, thereby ensuring that electric vehicles are fully powered through renewable energy.
Vikram Solar is operating a 1.3 GW solar photovoltaic module manufacturing unit at Oragadam, which takes its cumulative PV module manufacturing capacity to 2.5 GW.
Enabling environment
Gyanesh Chaudhary, vice-chairman and managing director, Vikram Solar, said the Tamil Nadu government offered an enabling policy environment and business ecosystem for ease of doing business, such as capital subsidy, interest subvention and low-tension power tariff subsidy.
He said the company was seeking to establish a new integrated facility of 2 GW in Tamil Nadu for manufacturing solar modules having full backward integration with solar cells.
“Tamil Nadu is well developed in terms of infrastructure, road and rail networks, ports and airports across the State providing excellent connectivity, power and other utility benefits... We believe Tamil Nadu can become a global manufacturing hub in the solar sector, and Vikram Solar will continue to support the State government to achieve it,” Mr. Chaudhary added.
At the forefront
He pointed out that Tamil Nadu had been one of the early proponents of clean energy and was at the forefront of India’s clean energy transition.
“We believe, with the State government’s endeavour to become energy self-sufficient, there is an immense opportunity for solar energy generation across segments — rooftop, large-scale solar parks and wind-solar hybrid projects. The Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation Limited plans to add 25 GW renewable energy in the next 10 years, including 20 GW solar power. Additionally, enabling policies like net-metering will further boost solar energy adoption,” Mr. Chaudhary added.
