Prayas Energy Group organized a half-day roundtable to discuss the challenges and way forward on operationalizing competitive bidding for large scale renewable energy procurement. The objective of this roundtable, titled,‘Renewable Energy Procurement through Competitive Bidding: Challenges and way forward’ was to provide a platform for sharing emerging issues and consolidate suggestions on the way forward on the issue.

The roundtable began with a welcome and introduction from Mr Shantanu Dixit, Coordinator of the Prayas Energy Group. Following this there were three presentations beginning with Ashwin Gambhir from Prayas who spoke on challenges and the way forward on renewable energy procurement through competitive bidding. This was followed by an industry perspective highlighting the issues and concerns by Mahesh Vipradas from Suzlon and the final presentation was by Ajit Pandit from ABPS Infra who spoke on challenges and implications for enabling competitive bidding for renewables.

Following the formal presentations, the chairman of the roundtable, Mr Alok Srivastava, Joint Secretary in the MNRE put forward his thoughts on competitive bidding. This was followed by an extensive discussion by all participants and speakers which brought forward various perspectives on the issue at hand. While everyone agreed that competitive bidding is the way to go forward for large scale renewable procurement at least cost, there were differing opinions on what the most appropriate time for its implementation would be. However there was broad agreement that it would be prudent to begin work on setting up the process and appropriately formulating the competitive bidding guidelines and bidding documents while incorporating the rich national and international experience with bidding in conventional and renewable energy. Concluding remarks and suggestions were offered by Shri Rajiv Bansal, Secretary, CERC and Shri Anil Jain, Advisor (Energy), Planning Commission.

The workshop was attended by over 40 senior professionals from different States, representing different stakeholders including, ERCs, MNRE, Planning Comission, Academia, Developers, Consultants, Financial Institutions and NGOs. The presentations made during the roundtable along with summary report of the discussion can be downloaded here.