The Andhra Pradesh government is planning to issue tenders for 10,000 MW of solar power plants in a phased manner. Andhra Pradesh Green Energy Corporation Ltd (APGECL), a subsidiary of APGENCO, is expected to float these tenders after state government’s approval.
These plants, which would be developed under the build-own-operate-transfer (BOOT) model, would come up in different parts of the state in order to ensure free power supply to the agriculture sector for the next 30 years. The subsidy expenditure incurred by the state government has almost tripled from Rs 31.86 billion in 2015-16 to Rs 83.54 billion in 2020-21. The average cost of supply has been increasing at the rate of 5.01 per cent (compound annual growth rate) over the past five years. The state government is sanctioning more than 50,000 new agricultural pump-set connections every year, resulting in increasing agricultural consumption over the coming years.