RPG flagship eyes Rs 2,000-cr solar project in Rajasthan

After entering the hydel energy sector earlier this year, RPG Group flagship CESC has now reiterated its commitment towards the renewable energy space with a Rs 2,000 crore solar power generation project in Rajasthan.

“We have begun land acquisition for our first solar power project near Bikaner in Rajasthan, which will initially require 200 acres of land. Eventually, we could scale it up to 1000 acres. In the next five years, we plan to produce between 200-400MW from there,” CESC vice-chairman Sanjeev Goenka said here.

This project — under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission, which aims to create 20,000 MW of solar generating capacity by the end of the 13th Five Year Plan — is CESC's second initiative in the green energy generation segment. In January, the company has announced that it had been awarded a 140MW hydel project in Himachal Pradesh.

“We are looking at the renewable energy sector in a very strong way. By September-October, we will firm up our future plans (for this vertical),” Goenka added, on the sidelines of CESC's annual general meeting today.

Incidentally, CESC claims to be the world's first thermal power utility to be registered with United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for carbon credits and has three Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects.

“The Dhariwal power project should be commissioned by March 2013,” he added, referring to CESC's Rs 3,000 crore facility in Chandrapur, Maharashtra, which will produce another 600 MW. “But we need to add more capacity, about another 2,000MW in the next six years. We are open to another project in West Bengal,” Goenka said.

Spencer's CESC's retail venture, Spencer's, will add another 2,00,000 sq ft of space in the 12 months with an investment of about Rs 30 crore, thereby bringing its total square footage to about 11,00,000 sq ft distributed across 230 stores nationwide, Goenka said.

“In the first quarter (of this fiscal), we have made profits at the store level for the first time. We are one of the two retails players in India to make such a profit. On a company level, break-even should happen in another 18 months. By the end of FY11, Spencer's is looking at a turnover of Rs 950 crore,” he added.