The Railway Energy Management Company Limited (REMCL) successfully auctioned 67.38 MW of rooftop solar projects for the Indian Railways. These projects will be developed at premises and properties owned by the Indian Railways across India.

Mytrah Energy emerged as the biggest winner in this auction, winning projects totaling 30.87 MW. The company quoted the lowest tariff of ₹2.39 (~$0.0374)/kWh to develop 1.15 MW of rooftop solar for North Frontier Railways. Azure Power won projects totaling 25.26 MW.

Fourth Partner Energy won bids to develop 6.95 MW; Sangam Advisors won bids to develop 3.3 MW, and ReNew Power Solar secured a 1 MW rooftop solar project for the Indian Railways.

The REMCL shortlisted 14 bidders in the technical round to participate in the financial stage. In all five firms won contracts to develop 67.38 MW.

Apart from the winners – JBM Solar, Sunsure Energy, S.G.Renewable Energy, Alfa Infraprop, Subash Infraengineers, Amplus Energy, Hero Solar Energy, Clean Max Enviro Energy Solutions, and Gensol Engineering participated in the bidding process.

A Central Financial Assistance (CFA) is also available from MNRE to installers via Railways for these projects. The CFA will be available to the winning bidders upon successful achievement of the development criteria as shown below:

The initial tender was announced in April 2017 for aggregated capacity of 52 MW.

According to Mercom’s Q2 2017 India Solar Quarterly Market Update, solar rooftop installations totaled 475 MW in first half 2017, while cumulative installations crossed a significant milestone of 1 GW at the end of Q2 2017.

Image credit: Azure Power