KIOCL, under the Ministry of Steel, has issued a tender for a floating solar project with a minimum capacity of 2.7 MW on the water reservoir at its blast furnace unit in Panambur, Karnataka.

Bids must be submitted by June 22, 2026.

Bidders must furnish an earnest money deposit of ₹7.06 million (~$74,144.22).

Selected bidders must furnish a performance guarantee of 5% of the project cost, excluding GST.

The scope of work entails the design, engineering, supply, installation, testing, and commissioning of the floating solar projects. It also involves providing operation and maintenance services for 25 years.

Selected bidders must evacuate the generated solar power up to the 6.6 kV high-tension panel at the Pellet Plant’s CPP switchgear. They must provide the associated utilities, services, electrical systems, automation, civil foundations, and supporting structures for the solar projects.

They must also provide all the documents and drawings for the project.

Successful bidders must provide a floating platform along with an anchoring and mooring system for mounting the solar modules. They must provide array junctions, distribution, and fuse boxes with string monitoring capabilities. These include miniature circuit breakers/isolators, surge arrestors with proper lugs, glands, ferrules, terminations, and mounting structures.

They must also provide DC cables, along with lugs and other materials, required proper cable termination at both ends. They must provide all electrical and monitoring systems, including PCUs, transformers, protection systems, low- and high-tension panels, meters, supervisory control and data acquisition, uninterruptible power supply, cables, earthing, lightning protection, weather-monitoring equipment, sensors, and data loggers.

Bidders must have at least seven years of experience completing similar work, including the design, engineering, installation, testing, and commissioning of floating solar projects of a minimum capacity of 1 MW.

The floating solar project must be completed within five months.

Selected bidders must compensate KIOCL for shutdowns caused by operational issues.

Bidders must meet any of the following requirements in the last seven years:

• They must have completed three similar works, each costing a minimum of ₹140 million (~$1.5 million)
• They must have completed two similar works, each costing at least ₹180 million (~$2 million)
• They must have completed one similar work, costing at least ₹280 million (~$3 million)

Bidders must have an average annual turnover of ₹110 million (~$1.15 million) over the last three financial years.

In 2020, KIOCL floated a tender to supply solar power through wheeling for its manufacturing unit in Mangalore.

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