SoftBank to offer free power from solar plants in India: Masayoshi Son

SoftBank Energy, which is trying to find a strong footing in India would offer free power from its solar power plants in India.

Speaking at the second Re-Invest conference, Masayoshi Son, CEO, SoftBank announced that their solar power plants would offer free power to all member countries of International Solar Alliance (ISA)

“As long as you have the land and sunshine, as long as you have the eyes and ears listening to me, I will give you free power.” Son said.

Son said that the life of a solar power project can extend to 80 years. “The capacity of the project lowers by 15 per cent in the first five years. But after that, the generation is maintained at 85 per cent of the project capacity for its lifetime,” he said. 

The SoftBank CEO who has invested in leading technology start ups in India said money and technology is not a problem but passion is.

SoftBank in 2015 joined hands with Bharti Enterprises and Foxconn with an estimated investment plan of $20 billion in the clean energy sector. Its initial plan to set up a solar cell and module manufacturing in India hasn’t seen any major progress yet. SoftBank aims to invest $1 trillion by 2030 in the Indian renewable energy sector.

For the same, it also urged the Indian government to auction 900GW of solar power projects in one go.

SB Energy, a subsidiary of SoftBank in India for building solar projects till now has currently won 1,400 MW of solar projects in the past two years. In the Bhadla solar park bidding, SB Energy bid Rs 2.45 per unit are creating a new record, last year.