The Railway Energy Management Company Limited (REMCL), a joint venture of the Indian Railways and RITES Limited, has issued a request for qualification (RfQ) to set up approximately 32.56 MW of rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) systems at various railway establishments and stations across the zonal railways in India.

The last date for the submission of bids is December 9, 2019, while the bid opening date has been scheduled for December 12, 2019.

The bidding process will be a single stage two packet centralized process carried out by REMCL on behalf of zonal railways without any subsidy or viability gap funding (VGF) support from the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) or railways.

This project aims to generate and supply power from rooftop solar PV systems under the public-private partnership (PPP) basis.

Broadly, the scope of work includes the design, engineering, procurement, erection, installation, testing, and commissioning of the solar PV systems, including operation and maintenance (O&M) of the systems for a period of 25 years.

The prospective bidders need to pay a sum of ₹1.2 million (~$16,891.2) as the earnest money deposit (EMD).

According to the tender, the bidder may be a single entity or a group of entities, coming together to implement the project.

As far as the technical capacity is concerned, the bidder, over the past three financial years, should have paid for or received payments of at least one solar PV grid-connected project of at least 100 kW at a single location for a minimum value of 35% of the offered capacity.

If the bidder has quoted for one project in any zonal railway with a capacity of 1 MW, then he must have successfully executed at least one project of not less than 35% of the quoted capacity.

In March 2019, Mercom had reported that the REMCL had also invited bids to set up 60.17 MW of rooftop solar PV capacity on the rooftops of offices, buildings, and railway establishments across the zonal railways in India.

Earlier, Mercom had reported that the Indian Railways is continuously trying to solarize the railway lines of the country. It is the single largest consumer of electricity with a roughly 2% share of the national energy consumption.