Adani Group, which has set up the world’s largest solar plant at a single location in Kamuthi in the district, claimed that it was incurring a loss of ₹60 lakh to ₹80 lakh a day due to ‘backdown’ instruction in the State.
After establishing five units – three 72 MW units and two 216 MW units – on a total outlay of ₹4,536 crore, the group’s three firms started generating power and supplying it to the grid from September 2016, but they could not supply the entire power because of the ‘backdown’ instructions.
“We are operating on loss and the daily loss amounted to ₹60 lakh to ₹80 lakh,” Santhosh Kumar Mall, Plant Head, told The Hindu on the sidelines of a plant visit on Tuesday. “Ever since we started generating power, we could supply only half of the total power produced to the grid,” he said.
The group’s three firms – Kamuthi Renewable Energy Ltd, Ramnad Solar Power Ltd and Adani Green Energy (Tamil Nadu) Ltd – started generating power and the generation reached the maximum of 630 MW during April-May, he said.
The backdown instruction was given to unplug the solar power from the State grid to ensure grid stability and this had affected the group companies heavily, he said.
The group had moved Tamil Nadu Electricity Regulatory Commission (TNERC), seeking compensation for the losses and the matter was pending before the Appellate Tribunal for Electricity, he said.
The group wanted to set up two or three more units of 50 MW each, but kept the decision in abeyance because of the backdown problem, he added.
