Tata Power Company to invest Rs1,300 crore in FY 12 in wind, solar energy

Tata Power Company (TPC) today said it will invest Rs1,300-crore in FY 12 to add 185 MW generation capacity from wind and solar energy.
    
The company, which commissioned a 3 MW solar power in Maharashtra's Mulshi last month, is targeting to add 35 MW from solar in FY 12 that will entail investing Rs550 crore, its executive director, S Ramakrishnan, told reporters here.
    
The capacity addition will come from a 25 MW project at Gujarat's Mithapur slated for commission in December 2011 and the rest is equally divided between expanding at Mulshi and installing capacities on rooftops of buildings, he added.
    
The ramp-up on both solar and wind energy is partly necessitated by regulatory environment which asks a power distribution company to source a certain percentage from cleaner sources, Ramakrishnan said.
    
TPC's distribution arm operates in Mumbai and New Delhi. Ramakrishnan said though the power generated will go into a central grid, it has entered into necessary agreements under which the power supplied is added to the distribution company's share from clean power.
    
Under regulatory guidelines, TPC will be required to source 10 MW from solar power by end FY 12, he said.

The company, which has set an ambitious target of sourcing 25% of its total generation from clean sources by FY 17, will also be upgrading its total installed wind power capacity to 400 MW from the current 250 MW, its executive director (operations), G Padmanabhan, said.
    
The wind power addition will require an investment of around Rs5 crore per MW which translates to an investment of Rs750 crore, he said, adding a bulk of the new capacity is coming up in Tamil Nadu, followed by Gujarat, Karnataka and Maharashtra.
    
The money required for the capacity addition will come from internal accruals and debt, Ramakrishnan said.
    
On the solar front, TPC today announced a target of having a total capacity of 300 MW in the next four-five-years from the present 4 MW but declined to give an investment plan for it, saying the cost per megawatt for installation will go down over time.
    
"We have invested about Rs50 crore in our Mulshi project which comes to about Rs15 crore per megawatt but we have seen that as technology evolves, the cost goes down," he said.
    
Padmanabhan said that the company will get a revenue of around Rs8.5 crore this year from the Mulshi facility.