Fortum India to invest 400 million euros in solar projects

Having a plan to invest up to 400 million euros in solar projects in India, Finnish firm Fortum is looking at greenfield plants to maximise its returns.

"Our keenness is that we want to look at greenfield (new) projects. We want to look at National Solar Mission projects where counter party is NTPC and Solar Energy Corp (SECI)," said Fortum India Managing Director Sanjay Aggarwal told PTI.

Elaborating on the plans, he further said: "When I say greenfield, I mean that our preference would not be to buy out power plants...(but) to construct our own plant because then we can extract value (earn decent profits). When we buy it from someone else then he makes money."

Fortum has recently secured 100 MW grid-connected solar project through competitive bidding in April this year under National Solar Mission.

The solar power plant will be built in Pavagada Solar Park in Tumkur District of Karnataka with a fixed tariff of Rs 4.79 per unit for 25 years.

At present, Fortum has 15 MW of solar capacity in India. In January 2016, the firm won a reverse auction for a 70 MW project at Bhadla solar park in Rajasthan, at a fixed tariff of Rs 4.34 per unit.

Aggarwal further said that "apart from solar, we would also look at two other fields where we have not invested anything. But clearly we would be excited to look at two fields--waste to energy and charge and drive (electricity charging points for vehicles)."

"Under the charge and drive we don't create the physical infrastructure but we provide a cloud-based service to manage large number of these stations. We feel that electric vehicles would be a reality in India very soon," he added.

Government has planned to have 100 GW of solar power generation capacity by 2022.

Asked about the company's plan to create power generation capacity in India, he said, "Out these 100 GW in 2022, if somebody makes the list to top performing plants. I am sure Fortum name will be there. We would work at our own pace."

On the debate about solar power tariff, Aggarwal said, "It is difficult to say that this is reasonable tariff for solar power."

He was of the view that solar tariff is worked out by a developers on various factors including quality of heat radiation and there could not be one reasonable range of tariff for entire country.

Listed on Nasdaq Helsinki, Fortum's main areas of operation are the Nordic and the Baltic countries, Russia and Poland.