The Ministry of Power has amended the standard bidding documents for procuring interstate transmission systems (ISTS) through a tariff-based competitive bidding process to include technical requirements concerning the high voltage (HV)dc and HVac systems.

The Ministry said there was no mention of technical requirements regarding the HVdc and HVac systems in the standard bidding documents issued previously on August 13, 2021.

In consultation with the Central Electricity Authority (CEA), the Ministry decided to modify the documents and include the provisions of the aggregate capital cost concerning the HVdc and HVac systems.

A new clause also has been added to the technical criteria, which states that the capital expenditure incurred on projects commissioned at least seven days before the bid submission deadline should be considered.

The capital expenditure should reflect in the audited account books of the technically evaluated entity. If only a part of the project has been commissioned, the capital expenditure on such part of the project should be considered.

The entity must have either executed such projects or held directly or indirectly at least 26% of the shareholding in the company that has executed the project.

Alternatively, as a provision to assess the entity’s experience in the construction of the project in the infrastructure sector, the entity should have received payments on projects commissioned at least seven days before the bid submission deadline.

Further, only the payments received during the last five financial years will qualify for computing the technical capacity.

Also, in cases where different individual contracts are signed between the same entities for the same project, the cumulative payments received under such individual contracts will be considered for meeting the qualification requirement.

The required aggregate capital cost of projects/aggregate payments received for projects should be calculated as per the table below:

If a project involves more than one voltage level, the requirement will be the total for all voltage levels. However, the minimum required capital cost for projects/ aggregate payments received for projects should be at least ₹5 billion (~$61.02 million).

For individual projects, the requirement will be calculated at 20% of the above-calculated aggregate capital cost of projects/aggregate payments received for the projects. However, for an individual project, the capital cost of projects/payments received for the project should be at least ₹1 billion (~$12.21 million).

In 2021, the Ministry of Power had stated that adopting tariff-based competitive bidding to develop intrastate transmission systems can effectively reduce the burden on the state governments. It would also lead to reduced tariffs leading to consumers’ benefits.

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