Gujarat: Policy for small scale solar units announced

The Gujarat government on Wednesday announced the policy facilitating small scale units that wished to generate solar power. The five years term policy will be called 'Small Scale Distributor Solar Project Policy' and the government will sign power purchase agreements with the stakeholders in place of inviting bids for establishing the project.

The energy minister Saurabh Patel informed that the government will sign power purchase agreement (PPA) for 25 years with the investors. The Gujarat Urja Vikas Nigam Limited will pay rate of 20 paise more per unit to the beneficiary projects under the policy. Patel said, "Now the society of farmers, cooperative societies, small scale companies also will be able to generate solar power under this policy. They can establish solar power project having capacity of 500 KW to 4 MW and can sell it to power companies in state. Priority will be given to the projects that are close to existing sub-stations or else they can inject power directly into 11KV lines," Patel added.