Central Electronics Limited (CEL), a public sector enterprise under the Government of India’s Ministry of Science and Technology, has floated a tender for the supply of one million multicrystalline solar photovoltaic cells with wattage capacity greater than 4.70 W.

Bidders are not required to pay an earnest money deposit. The last date for the submission of bids is April 27, 2021. Bids will be opened on the same day.

The cells must be 156.75 x 156.75 mm ± 0.25mm or 157x 157 mm or ± 0.25 in dimension. They must be five bus bars in length and 220 ± 20 microns in thickness. The cells must be delivered in staggered lots as per CEL’s requirements by July 31, 2021.

The cells must be free of any cracks, holes, cuts, edge chipping, smudges, patches, spots, discontinuity of metal printing lines, or color mismatches. The cells should have homogeneous silicon nitride coating without any color variations. The packing of the cells should be in lots of 100 cells or as per the vendors’ standard size.

The bidder should be an original manufacturer. The vendor should have a minimum of 30 MW/annum in-house multicrystalline solar cells manufacturing capacity.

The modules will be manufactured using accepted cells and with glass having optical loss of approximately 2% and transmittance of 91%.

In January this year, CEL floated a tender for 1.8 million multicrystalline solar photovoltaic cells with wattage greater than 4.68 W.

Earlier, CEL had floated two tenders for the supply of 1,430,000 solar cells. The first tender was for the supply of 1.4 million multicrystalline or monocrystalline cells meeting the domestic content requirements. The second tender was for 30,000 multicrystalline or monocrystalline cells.

According to Mercom’s India Solar Tender Tracker, CEL has floated tenders for about 5.13 million multicrystalline cells as of December 2020.

CEL is one of the central public sector units among Coal India and BHEL that is looking to ramp its solar component manufacturing capacity under the production-linked incentive program announced by the government.