Japan's Orix Corp partners with Sun Group for solar business in India

Orix is the largest Japanese solar developer with 1 GW of solar projects (570MW commissioned) including 150MW of rooftop solar portfolio. It also has a major presence in wind and biomass power generation as well as energy storage and energy efficiency solutions for large private-sector customers. Besides its financial investment into Sun Renewables, Orix brings best practices in project development, high quality solar design and engineering, and expertise in monitoring and operating its rooftop solar portfolio, which is larger than that of any Indian solar developer’s.  

“We are very excited to partner with Sun Group and to leverage its local business knowledge and the group’s overall operating experience spanning over 100 years. With complementary strengths of Orix and Sun Group, Sun Renewables is ideally positioned to be the market leader in offering comprehensive sustainable energy solutions for the Indian market - starting with solar power,” commented Hidetake Takahashi, senior managing director of Orix.

The distributed solar segment in India is expected to grow from a total installed capacity of 1 GW today to about 15 GW by 2022 with opportunities in rooftop as well as small ground-mount solar projects for private, government and public sector power consumption. Sun Renewables’ emphasis is on this segment of Indian solar with a special focus on serving the private power purchase requirements of large C&I clients. 

Uday Khemka, vice chairman, Sun Group, added, “Distributed generation solar energy will transform the commercial and industrial energy landscape in India in the decade to come. Our joint venture will benefit from Orix’s world-class solar track record, management experience and quality processes across hundreds of mega-watts of solar projects with a view to serving our clients over the long-term through robust, quality-conscious processes in every facet of our project development and operations.” 

Sun Group is a diversified global investment group, with investments in India, CIS countries and other emerging markets. The founding shareholders of the group are part of an Indian business family that has been active in India for over a hundred years and internationally for over seventy years. In India, Sun helped establish the private-equity sector through a series of successful PE franchises which have invested over $ 6 billion across themes. The group established one of the country’s first generation solar projects in 2011.

Sun New Energy is the group’s flagship investment company in the new energy space with a focus on renewable energy, energy storage and electric mobility - in relation to the last of which it has recently announced a joint venture with Chetan Maini to establish Sun Mobility.