The state owned company plans to buy power from 25 years from the solar plant to be built at Bhadla solar park.
By the end of March, Fortum expects to sign the Power Purchase Agreement with NTPC. Following the formalization, Fortum can finalize plans for the solar park.
The Finnish company won a reverse auction in January for the 70 MW project with a fixed tariff of Rs4.34/kWh (about EUR60/MWh) for 25 years.
The online bidding was conducted by NTPC under the phase two batch two tranche 1 of Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM). JNNSM is an Indian government program to boost the nation’s solar capabilities.
Currently, Fortum has 15MW solar capacity in India, with solar plants in the Indian states of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.
Fortum’s first 5 MW solar PV plant is located in Bhilwara, Rajasthan. Its second project, is a 10 MW Solar PV plant in Kapeli in Madhya Pradesh.
At the end of 2015, Fortum recorded a cumulative power generation of over 35,861 MWh at its Bhilwara plant and approximately 20,020 MWh at the Kapeli plant.
In 2015, the company claims that the Bhilwara plant and the Kapeli plant reduced over 29,000 tons and 19,400 tons of CO2 emissions respectively.
Separately, NTPC recently announced plans to build a 2.25GW solar power plant in the state of Andhra Pradesh.
The move was reportedly in line with the government of India’s goal to have 100GW of installed solar capacity by 2022, in a bid to reduce dependency on coal to generate electricity and combat climate change.
