The Chhattisgarh State Renewable Energy Development Agency (CREDA) has issued two tenders for the supply and installation of 5,000 small solar irrigation pumps and 700 solar trees in the state.

A solar tree is a structure where solar energy technology has been planted on a single pillar which looks like a tree trunk.

The deadline for the submission of bids for solar pumps is November 21, 2019. Meanwhile, the bid submission date for the solar tree tender is December 11, 2019.

Tender for solar pumps

The scope of work for the solar pump tender includes the design, supply, installation, and commissioning of the pumps of capacities 0.5 HP and 1 HP AC & DC surface, with five years of onsite warranty and insurance.

Interested bidders will have to submit a sum of ₹500,000 (~$7,097) as the earnest money deposit (EMD). Meanwhile, CREDA has stated that it will consider bids from those bidders who are registered with the agency as a new entrepreneur or startup.

As far as the eligibility criteria are concerned, interested bidders should have a minimum experience of supplying and installing at least 100 SPV pumps whereas, those from other states should have a minimum experience of 200 such pumps.

Installers should also have a net worth of ₹1 million (~$14,195.1) as on March 31, 2018, and an aggregate turnover of minimum ₹20 million (~$.28 million) in the last three financial years.

Those bidders who are also the manufacturers of important components of Solar PV (SPV) pumps, such as SPV modules, surface, and submersible pumps, are expected to submit the proof of their manufacturing unit.

According to the tender, the successful bidder must complete 30% of the assigned work by March 31, 2020, and the remaining balance of 70% should be completed by August 2020.

Tender for solar trees

For the solar tree tender, the interested bidders are expected to pay a sum of ₹200,000 (~$2,839) as the EMD.

According to CREDA, interested bidders should have a minimum direct experience of supplying and installing at least 50 kW of solar off-grid projects. For bidders from outside the state, this capacity has been raised to 100 kW.

For this tender, CREDA has specifically mentioned that startups, joint ventures, consortia, and new entrepreneurs are not allowed to bid for this tender.

The scope of work for this tender includes the design, supply, fabrication, installation, testing, and commissioning of solar trees with five years of onsite warranty and insurance.

As per the technical criteria, the prospective bidders must have a valid test report of the major components such as SPV modules, lamps, battery, and controller of the solar trees.

To facilitate the growth of renewable energy generation systems in the state, Chhattisgarh recently approved the regulations for distributed renewable sources.

Keeping in mind the issue of land availability for solar projects, the state of Chhattisgarh is making a shift to distributed generation projects. Recently, it also issued terms and conditions for distributed solar projects in the state. According to these, the minimum capacity of a project must be 1 kW, and the maximum limit has been set at 1 MW.

In October 2019, the Solar Energy Corporation of India Limited (SECI) had also floated a tender for the installation of 500 solar home cooking systems in five districts spanning across the states of Chhattisgarh, Meghalaya, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, and Gujarat.

Image credit: Dr. avishai teicher Pikiwiki Israel [CC BY 2.5]