New Delhi, Dec. 19: Azure Power plans to set up a solar plant in Purulia soon.

The country’s first private solar power producer is eyeing a capacity of 100MW by 2013 that will require an investment of $300-400 million.

The company had built a 2MW unit spread over 13 acres at Punjab’s Awan village in six months.

“We plan to set up a 2MW plant in Purulia and will scale it up to 40MW in the next five years,” Inderpreet Wadhwa, founder and CEO of Azure Power, told The Telegraph.

The project will come up in an area that is deficient in power, Wadhwa said. The plant will cover around 80 per cent of the local substation area and help the region through the local grid. Azure plans to focus on rural and semi-urban areas that might be ignored by large projects.

Wadhwa said the firm would be raising around $10 million from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) for upcoming projects in Punjab, Haryana and Gujarat. Projects of up to 22MW are under development; talks are on for another 30MW.

The proposed investment from IFC will be quasi-equity infusion. Last year, Azure raised an undisclosed amount from Helion Venture Partners and the US-based Foundation Capital.

India plans to generate 20,000MW from solar power by 2022 under the country’s national solar mission. About 8 per cent of the country’s energy needs comes from renewable sources such as wind and hydropower.

The aim is to bring solar power on a par with the cost of electricity on the grid by 2022 and with coal-based thermal power by 2030. The mission has set a target of producing 20,000MW through solar power by 2022, up from just 200MW now.

Solar energy has a great potential in India, but its growth has been hampered by the high costs of the technology and the inability of power companies to obtain sizeable tracts of land for solar panels.

To encourage more investment in the sector, the government is increasing subsidies for solar projects and making it mandatory for state utilities to purchase solar power.

Panel concern

A parliamentary panel has expressed concern over the poor progress made in the implementation of the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana for households below the poverty line.

The panel called for putting in place a “more stringent monitoring mechanism to ensure speedy implementation of this programme”.