The Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), a government undertaking, has invited bids to manufacture and supply 12 million units of solar cells.

The last date for the submission of bids is June 12, 2020.

Both international and domestic manufacturers are allowed to bid against this tender. Foreign vendors need to supply the first 4 million solar cells by air and the next 8 million by sea.

The solar cells should have five busbars and will have a power output of at least 4.62W. The thickness of the solar cells should be at least 200 microns.  The cells should be made from multicrystalline silicon, and the dimension of the cells should be 156.75+-0.25 mm or 157+-0.25 mm. The efficiency of solar cells should be at least 18.8%. The cells should be of ‘A’ category and have homogeneous silicon nitride coating without any color variation.

To take part in the bidding process, the vendor should have a minimum of 300 MW per year, in-house crystalline silicon solar cell manufacturing capacity. The vendor should have supplied one million units of multicrystalline silicon solar cells in the last two years.

Regarding the technical criteria, the multicrystalline silicon solar cells offered should comply with BHEL’s technical specifications.

As per the tender document, the delivery of the four million solar cells should be made within four weeks of the date of the purchase order, and the remaining should be delivered in batches of four million every four weeks after that. Preference will be given to local vendors under the ‘Make in India’ initiative.

BHEL has been consistently procuring solar cells. In February, it issued a similar tender for the manufacture and supply of 12 million units of 156.75 mm multicrystalline solar cells with five busbars and 4.62W. Previously the company invited bids to manufacture and supply 74,500 units of multicrystalline solar modules for NTPC’s 100 MW floating solar project at Ramagundam in Telangana. Before that, Merocm had reported that BHEL had issued a tender for the manufacture and supply of 4,500,000 multi silicon solar wafers with a specification of 157-millimeters.