Central Electronics Limited (CEL), a public sector enterprise under the Ministry of Science and Technology, has invited bids for the supply of 200,000 monocrystalline solar cells of wattage capacity 5.1 W or higher.

According to the bidding document, the cells must be 156.75 x 156.75 mm ± 0.25mm or 157x 157 mm or ± 0.25 in dimension. They must be five bus bars in length and 200 ± 20 microns in thickness.

The last date to submit the bids is June 29, 2021, and the bids will be opened on the same day.

The bidders are not required to pay any earnest money deposit for this tender. The bids submitted will be valid for 45 days from the date of opening them.

The cells must be free of cracks, holes, cuts, edge chipping, streaks, patches, spots, discontinuity of metal printing lines, or color mismatches.

The bidding documents also require the cells to have a homogeneous silicon nitride coating without any color variations. The packing of the cells should be in lots of hundreds or as per the standard size followed by the vendor.

Only original manufacturers or their authorized representatives will be eligible to participate in the bidding process.

To participate in the bidding process, the interested bidder should have a minimum capacity of 30 MW/annum in-house monocrystalline solar cell manufacturing capacity.

The tender document specifies that if the defective cells are less than 3% in the supplied batch, all such cells will have to be replaced free of cost. Any defect in cells amounting to more than 3% will lead to the whole lot being rejected.

The modules will be manufactured using the accepted cells and with glass having optical loss of approximately 2% and transmittance of 91%. The total power produced by the modules should be 2% less than the arithmetic summation of the power of all individual cells used therein.

Unapproved vendors are expected to supply a sample lot of at least 200 cells. These will be checked against CEL’s testing protocols. CEL will have free access to the supplier’s works during testing and final inspection.

Recently, CEL had floated a tender to procure 500,000 multicrystalline solar cells with a wattage capacity of 4.68 W and higher.

Earlier, CEL had floated two tenders for 1,430,000 solar cells. The first tender was for the supply of 1.4 million multicrystalline or monocrystalline solar cells, while the second was for 30,000 multicrystalline or monocrystalline cells.

According to Mercom’s India Solar Tender Tracker, CEL has floated tenders for about 8.48 million monocrystalline and multicrystalline solar cells so far.