The independent power producer says that its Pan-India project will be able to compete with “baseload” power from fossil fuels.
ReNew Power has now received a $1 billion loan for the RTC project from a group of 12 international lenders led by the Dutch multinational Rabobank. ReNew Power says this is the largest project financing in India’s renewables sector.
Mitsui, a Japanese company, also bought a 49% stake in the project earlier this year.
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The RTC project by ReNew Power will be made up of three 300MW wind farms, one in the state of Maharashtra and two further south in the state of Karnataka. The state of Rajasthan in the north will have a 400MW solar array and a 100MWh battery.
It won a 25-year contract at an auction to sell power to the Indian government’s Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI).
In the first year of production, ReNew Power will get a tariff of INR 2,900/MWh ($36.52/MWh). This payment will go up by 3% each year until the 15th year of a 25-year PPA with the utilities. Offtaker SECI has already said that this means the developer will get an average tariff of INR 3,590/MWh for the output over the 25-year term.
India’s energy transition will be helped a lot by projects that combine wind and solar power, and maybe even use batteries to store energy.
India has held a number of bids for hybrid projects that can use both land and grid resources to their best advantage. Hybrid projects can also provide a more stable amount of power because wind power is higher at night and solar power is higher during the day.
India wants to have 500GW of non-fossil fuel capacity by 2030. Most of this will come from wind and solar power.