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'SunEdison bankruptcy filing not to impact India's solar prog'

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Press Trust of India New York
Filing for bankruptcy by US-based renewable energy major SunEdison poses no problem to India's robust solar energy programme of adding 100 GW capacity by 2022, said Power Minister Piyush Goyal.

Last week, SunEdison filed for bankruptcy protection in the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.

Its subsidiary SunEdison India has built nearly 700 MW of operational power plants and has a pipeline of 1.7 GW to build.

"The bankruptcy SunEdison has filed is in the US, not in India. So Indian entity is an independent entity incorporated in India...I do not see any problem to our solar plan because of this," Goyal told PTI during his recent visit here.
 

The minister, who also holds the charge of coal and new and renewable energy, further said it will be not for the first time that a company has gone burst, nor will be the last.

Companies fail for many reasons and "it's an international problem they have had, not in India", he added.

"(India's solar energy) plan is very robust. The bidders are many. It's not as if they (SunEdison) bid any exceptionally low prices, which is why a section of media is trying to make it out to be that because the prices were low they have gone burst," he said.

Several reputed companies are bidding for solar projects in India.

Solar power tariff had touched an all time low of Rs 4.63 per unit in November last year when SunEdison quoted the price of electricity in an e-auction by NTPC for 500 MW project in solar power park in Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh.

After that, the solar power tariff fell further.

India has set an ambitious target of having 100 GW of solar power generation capacity by 2022 including 60 GW from grid connected solar projects and 40 GW from rooftop solar.

India's installed solar power generation capacity has already crossed the 5 GW mark earlier this year.

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First Published: Apr 26 2016 | 4:07 PM IST

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