In line with its ambitious target of achieving 100 percent carbon neutrality by 2030, the State Bank of India (SBI), India’s largest commercial bank, has invited Expression of Interest (EoI) for the procurement of 3-5 MW (offsite) of solar power for its premises in the state of Telangana.

The brief scope of work includes identifying the location for the project, land acquisition, installation, commissioning, power evacuation, and obtaining all requisite approvals (including open access approvals). Apart from this, the bidder will also be responsible for the operation and maintenance (O&M) of the project.

In the tender, the bank has also specified that the bidder has to use components complying with approved or minimum technical standards as per the International Electro-technical Commission (IEC) or Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS). The successful bidder will also be required to bear the entire expenditure of interconnection facilities for power evacuation.

To be eligible to bid for the project, a bidder should have owned, installed and commissioned at least 10 MW of ground mounted solar projects until November 30, 2018. Moreover, the net worth of the bidder should be ₹50 million (~$ 0.71 million) in each of the last two financial years.

The last date for the submission of EoI is December 26, 2018.

According to a statement issued by the SBI, “This is the first stage of a multi-stage procurement process. The objective of this request for the EoI is to identify and pre-register eligible applicants who are interested in providing the proposed solution and have suitable capacity, capability and experience.”

Earlier, Mercom reported about SBI raising its first tranche of $650 million through a maiden green bond offering, which is a part of its goal of raising $3 billion to fund renewable energy projects.

Recently, the European Investment Bank (EIB) has confirmed it is going to increase its support to investment in onshore wind through the expansion of an existing lending program with the State Bank of India (SBI).

In October 2017,  the SBI and the World Bank announced ₹23.2 billion ($357 million) in credit facilities for seven Indian solar companies that were be used to develop grid-connected solar rooftop projects with an aggregate capacity of 575 MW.