The Railway Energy Management Company Ltd (REMCL), a joint venture of RITES Ltd and the Indian Railways, has floated a tender inviting bids for setting up a 15 MW solar project, with a 7 MW/14 MWh battery energy storage system (BESS), on railway land at Butibori in Nagpur.
REMCL said that a 25-year Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) will be signed with the developer at a tariff that is discovered during the bidding process. The bidding process will open on August 9 and close on the same day.
The last date to submit the bids is August 9, 2021, and bids will be opened on the same day.
According to the tender document, the capacity utilisation factor of the solar project should be at least 17 % for the PPA period, and the BESS availability should be 98 percent. To participate in the competitive bidding process, the bidder should promote only commercially established and operational technologies to minimise the technology risk and to achieve timely commissioning of the project.
Interested bidders will have to submit an amount of ₹400,000 (~$5,515)/MW as a performance bank guarantee along with the response to the tender. All micro, small, and medium enterprises with Udyog Aadhaar certificates will be exempted from the payment of bid security amount.
The bidder’s net worth should be equal to or greater than Rs 4 crore/MW of the quoted capacity for the bid, as of the last date of the previous financial year. The net worth to be considered for the purpose will be the cumulative net worth of the bidding company or consortium together with the net worth of the affiliates of the bidders.
The bidder’s minimum annual turnover should be Rs 3.15 crore/MW of offered capacity during the last financial year.
The bidder should also have an approval letter from the lending institution, committing a line of credit for a minimum of ₹7.9 million (~$108,928)/MW of the quoted capacity towards meeting the working capital requirement of the project.
In December last year, REMCL invited bids for a pilot project to procure renewable energy power for the long term from grid-connected solar power projects with energy storage systems. The scope of work included providing a techno-economical, feasible, and innovative solution for the effective utilization of solar power during non-solar hours through energy storage technologies.
Earlier, RITES had once again extended the bid submission deadline for setting up 1 GW of land-based solar projects on various zonal railways lands across India.
