State-owned Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) has issued a tender for the supply of Balance of System (BoS) items needed for the installation of the 5 MW of floating solar projects in the state of West Bengal.

BHEL is setting up the project for the West Bengal Power Development Corporation Limited (WBPDCL) at their 1,600 MW coal-fired thermal power plant in Sagardighi area of the state’s Murshidabad district.

The bid submission deadline is July 22, 2019.

The detailed scope of work includes the supply of BoS components, installation, commissioning, along with the supply of all the hardware materials. The project would also require the supply of 16,860 solar PV modules of 320-325W, series interconnection of SPV modules to form strings, and the installation of 36 sets of string monitoring boxes which would be in the scope of supply by BHEL.

In February 2018, the West Bengal Power Development Corporation Limited (WBPDCL) had issued this 5 MW floating a solar tender.

Then in March 2018, the auction for these projects was conducted in the state in which a Gurgaon-based company, International Coil Limited had emerged as the winner. In all, five bidders had participated in the financial round. Adani Infra had quoted ₹337.25 million (~$5.19 million)  for 5 MW, Vikram Solar bid at ₹379.82 million (~$5.84 million), Sterling & Wilson quoted ₹393.59 million (~$6.06 million) while Giriraj Renewables quoted ₹475.48 million (~$7.32 million)  for the entire capacity.

However, the winner International Coil Limited could not commence the project development, which eventually led to the cancellation of this tender.

“The tender was reissued in December 2018, and BHEL got the contract for the 5 MW of floating solar projects,” a WBPDCL official told Mercom.

Floating solar PV projects are slowly gaining traction in India. In the past few months, several tenders for small-capacity floating solar PV projects have been issued.

West Bengal is one of the least developed solar states in India with an installed large-scale solar capacity of a mere 84 MW and a project pipeline of 54 MW, according to Mercom’s India Solar Project Tracker.

Image credit: Ocean Sun