The main purpose of the Gujarat Solar Power Transmission Project, funded by a $100 million loan approved by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in September 20111, was to provide a high voltage connection from the Charanka Solar Park in Patan district of Gujarat to the state and national grids to the enable evacuation of solar power generated by the park’s privately funded solar farms. Its secondary purpose was to help develop the fledgling solar energy industry in Gujarat and India as an alternative to traditional power generation that relies heavily on fossil fuels. Particularly, it was to support the longer-term goal of government to facilitate the development of 20,000 megawatts (MW) of solar power by 2022 through the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission. The project was the first major investment under the mission.
The power evacuation infrastructure delivered by the project at completion included transformer substations, high voltage transmission lines, and related structures and civil works. Completion of the infrastructure was 2 years later than planned because of a 9-month delay in loan effectiveness, additional activities by the executing agency (EA), the Gujarat Energy Transmission Corporation (GETCO) to meet the earlier-than-expected evacuation from the solar farms, and the longer-than-proposed time required for procurement through international competitive bidding procedure. Because of the need to rush evacuation capability, GETCO used its own funds to complete some of the physical outputs, following the ADB-financed designs and specifications. The commissioning was successfully completed, and the high voltage transmission system is functioning as planned.
Tapping a subproject of a cluster technical assistance (TA) financed by the Government of the United Kingdom through the Department for International Development, the project also helped women living in 18 villages in the Charanka Solar Park area to participate in project implementation and provided them with vocational training and livelihoods programs. Against a target of 300 women and men, 386 students (14% female) received skills training, with funding to completely deliver the training provided by GETCO after the TA closed in 2014. A baseline survey conducted by GETCO found that, of the 420 youth in the local areas who expressed interest in vocational skills training, only 23 or 5% were women. This was below the target set, for women to comprise 30% of the vocational training participants. Against a target of 100, 136 female-headed poor households were provided non-traditional livelihood skills training including in mobile phone repair, construction of smokeless cook stoves, energy audit and conservation, and kitchen gardening.
The completed outcome and impact of the project furthered Gujarat’s and India’s policies on developing alternative energy and solar power. The project exceeded its total grid-connected solar power generation targets of about 1,000 MW by 2013 and 4,000 MW by 2017, achieving 25,000 MW by 2018, six times that expected by ADB at appraisal and higher than the government’s 2022 target under the Nehru mission. By ensuring that private sector solar farms could transmit their power to the state grid, it reduced the offtake risk, which encouraged more developers to join the solar park. By helping generate a local market for solar panels, 3.5 million of which have been installed in Charanka, it has fast tracked homegrown manufacturing and competition in India. This in turn has led to much lower costs and instead of a subsidized feed-in tariff and guaranteed offtake price of Indian rupee (₹)9/kilowatt when the project was formulated, bids hover on a tariff of around ₹3/kilowatt-hour. With that tariff rate, solar power is competitive with other power generation sources, helping to assure future expansion of this source of clean energy.
The government of Gujarat, through the GETCO, was the project EA. GETCO established a dedicated project management unit, headed by a director of chief engineer rank, to take charge of day-to-day implementation.
