Fresh auction to be held for solar PLI scheme

The government has decided against accommodating past qualified bidders for the Rs 19,500-crore production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for solar manufacturing and will conduct fresh auction with a minimum 90% localisation clause, a senior government official said.

"It is proposed to prescribe minimum 90% local value addition and 22% module performance for being eligible for PLI," the official said. "In order to qualify for the bid, the applicant manufacturer will have to promise minimum integration across solar cells and modules."

In the initial version of the scheme with an outlay of Rs 4,500 crore, the government had received 18 eligible bids for 54.8 GW and had selected three bidders - Reliance New Energy, Shirdi Sai Electricals, and Jindal India Solar - for about 8.7 GW.


At that time, the renewable energy ministry had said it could choose the remaining bidders if the PLI allocation goes up.

Coal India, Adani Infrastructure, Larsen & Toubro, ReNew Solar, Tata Power, Acme Solar, and Vikram Solar were among the others in race.

However, the official cited earlier told ET that it has now been decided to call fresh bids since the bid conditions have changed.

In the first phase, the selection of bidders under the scheme was made based on three parameters - extent of integration, proposed manufacturing capacity, and the performance efficiency of the modules.

There are four stages in module making - polysilicon, wafers, cells, and modules. India's existing 15 GW production capacity has no polysilicon or wafer production capacity.

The official said preference will be given to manufacturers who set up higher capacity plants. However, the applicant manufacturer will have to undertake to set up a manufacturing plant of minimum 1,000 MW capacity.

The maximum capacity that can be awarded to a single bidder under PLI including the capacity awarded in the initial bid was 10 GW polysilicon to modules and 6 GW for wafers to modules.