Lightsource BP has successfully finished its first utility-scale solar project in Maharashtra, India.
The UK Solar Projects and Smart Energy Solutions Company was awarded the contract through a highly competitive (450MW) tender process that ended in September 2016.
The tender process was conducted and awarded by Solar Energy Corporation India, and it’s one of the two contracts that the Indian government has assigned to a foreign company.
Lightsource BP’s bid was among the lowest levels of viability gap funding support at $28,800/MW, which contributed to their winning the tender.
The Wagdari firm was funded through a partnership of UK Climate Investments, a joint venture between Macquarie’s Green Investment Group and the Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy in the UK.
Being the first sizeable project in India, Lightsource BP’s CEO Nick Boyle said that the successful project completion was a testimony to the company’s ability to deliver.
The 97-hectare was built with 200,000 modules of solar panels. Construction and technical expertise, as well as photovoltaic modules, were provided by India’s Sterling and Wilson, and LONGi Solar (supplied the modules).
Richard Abel, UKCI’s Managing Director, said, “Official commissioning of the site is a major milestone towards providing clean electricity for around 20,000 homes in the Maharashtra region.
UK Climate Investments is proud to have worked with Lightsource BP in their first solar project in India, bringing together private sector expertise and catalytic climate finance funding to support India’s transition towards a low carbon economy.”
UK’s minister for energy and clean growth, Claire Perry singled out the Indian project as vivid evidence of the country’s ability to export their expertise in solar power to the rest of the world starting with India.
She said, “I am delighted that UKCI is working alongside London-based Lightsource BP to leverage the UK’s expertise in solar and support India’s ambitions for renewable energy.”
She further added that the United Kingdom has a track record of exporting their local expertise to the outside world, and the partnership with Lightsource BP to complete the Wagdari project is one of the best examples of collaboration between the public and private sector to deliver results that benefit the entire universe.
