The Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) of Jaipur in Rajasthan, has invited bids for 61 solar energy-based borewell water pumps to be installed in various villages of Jaipur region II.

The scope of work includes designing, providing, installation, and commissioning of the solar energy-based borewell water pumping systems along with comprehensive operation and maintenance.

The interested bidders need to pay a sum of ₹970,000 (~$13,704) and ₹242,500 (~$3,426) earnest money deposit (EMD).

The deadline for the submission of bids is November 5, 2019, while the opening of the technical bid is November 6, 2019.

Regarding the technical criteria, the bidder should possess the latest satisfactory test report of a complete solar photovoltaic (SPV) water pumping system having a pump capacity of a minimum of 2.21 kW.

As far as the financial criteria are concerned, the bidder should have an experience of executing, successful commissioning, and completing annual maintenance contract (AMC) or comprehensive maintenance work for at least a year. The cost of work shouldn’t be less than ₹7.2 million (~$102,783), which is 15% of the estimated cost, or the bidder should have completed a similar work of total installed capacity of 53.36 kW.

The work needs to be completed within nine months, states the tender.

The estimated cost of the project is ₹48.5million (~$0.69 million).

The work will include operation and maintenance of the installations for an initial period of five years, after which this could be extended further up to another 2.5 years on mutual consent of both parties.

In September 2019, it was reported that Rajasthan proposed to purchase surplus power generated by solar pumps at ₹3.44/kWh.

States have been floating tenders for empanelment of vendors for solar pumps and also procurement of solar pumps. Recently, The Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (MSEDCL) issued a tender for the empanelment of vendors to design, manufacture, install, and commission 7,500 solar water pumps of 7.5 HP with the provision of data transfer by automated metering reading (AMR) to MSEDCL’s server. Haryana announced a pilot project for the installation of 468 solar pumps totaling a cumulative capacity of around 2.9 MW.

By far, the largest tender for solar pumps was issued by Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) in August 2019. The tender was for procuring 175,000 off-grid solar water pumping systems by EESL, on behalf of the state nodal agencies.

Image credit: Prabuddha Raj [CC BY-SA 4.0]