Sun Edison to set up 18 MW Solar Park in Tamil Nadu

Sun Edison, a US-based solar energy firm, announced on 25 February 2014 to set up a solar park in Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu.

The 18 megawatt (MW) park will work on a model where parcels of the solar assets will be sold to different customers who wish to own solar plants either captive power consumption or to avail themselves of the accelerated depreciation scheme.

The accelerated depreciation schemes helps the owner, write off the cost of the asset as depreciation during the first year of ownership to save taxes and allows to sell the renewable energy credits.

Parcels of the assets that are not sold off will be owned by SunEdison which will sell the power generated to third party consumers based on long term power purchase agreements.

The solar park will lock in electricity pricing for 25 years, protecting owners from the rising cost of fossil fuel-generated electricity.

Of the 18MW, 9MW of solar modules are fixed while remaining 9 MW are tracker modules. The tracker modules comprise of building solar plants on axis that moves from east to west, tracking the movement of the sun to capture maximum sunlight.

While the fixed ones will generate about 1.6 million units of electricity per MW per year, the tracker modules will generate 1.86 million units. The total cost for a tracker model project will be 8.7 to 8.8 crore rupees per MW when compared with 7.8 crore rupees per MW for fixed model.

Sun Edison has already constructed and sold 1.5 megawatt (MW) of the 18 megawatt (MW) and expects to complete the rest by September 2014.