India unveils 37 National Solar Mission project winners

Seven developers were allocated concentrating solar power (CSP) licenses totaling 470MW, with individual project sizes ranging from 20MW to 100MW.

Thirty others were granted PV licenses totaling 150MW, carved into 5MW parcels. The other 350MW of PV capacity to be awarded in the mission’s first phase will be dished out next year.

The list of PV winners is an incongruous cocktail of firms, betraying the government’s dueling desires to incubate renewables start-ups while also attracting deep-pocketed energy incumbents into the sector.

PV winners include ascendant Delhi-based renewables developer Azure Power, industrial conglomerate Punj Lloyd, Karnataka’s state-run power utility, and the Indian subsidiary of US-based solar developer SunEdison.

The