UP Floats Tender To Outsource Operations & Maintenance Of Solar Mini-Grids 

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The Uttar Pradesh New and Renewable Energy Development Agency (UPNEDA) has now issued a tender to outsource the operations and maintenance of its solar mini-grids. The government plans to give the contract to the interested parties on a revenue-sharing basis. The tender also said that with this, the state agency intends to revive and restore the old mini-grids. 

The UP government released its mini-grid policy in 2016. Post this, it installed 16 different solar mini-grids with a cumulative power of 2.332 Megawatt (MW). In addition, another 0.548 MW of total solar energy capacity was added to the state with the installation of 28 mini-solar plants under the decentralized distributed generation scheme. 

“UPNEDA intends to Operate & Maintain these plants through private organizations under a revenue sharing model because, for revival and restoration of these solar plants, a huge amount of Capex as well as Opex is required as it needs replacement/ upgradation of faulty Inverters, Batteries, Solar Panels & Cables, etc,” the tender document said. 

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This O&M contract is specially meant to maintain the solar mini-grids and small solar plants after the completion of five years of their installation. After five years of its installation, these solar assets were supposed to be transferred to UNPEDA by the solar developers. These solar projects were built under the Build, Operate, Maintain, and Transfer (BOMT) mode. 

As per the details of the tender, the interested parties have to submit their bids by the end of May 2023. The technical bids will be opened on May 23. UPNEDA said the bidders must offer a bank guarantee of Rs 2.5 lakh for the bid. It has also been said that the annual average annual turnover of the participating companies must be at least Rs 6 crore. 

The tender has also put a condition that the bidders must have an experience of five years in building, owning, and operating at least 50 mini-grids with a cumulative capacity of 3000 Kilowatt or more. It also said that the bidders must have a minimum net worth of Rs 100 crores in the last financial years 21-22. 

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Under the mandate of the tender, the bidders have to ensure regular cleaning and protection of the solar panels in these solar projects. They also have to take responsibility for top-up of electrolytes, cleaning terminals and applying petroleum jelly, and other maintenance works. Meanwhile, The bidders would get the liberty to serve new customers of rural households, small and medium-sized enterprises, and others from these 44 sites to bring financial viability to these projects.