TATA BP SOLAR TO INVEST RS 8,000 CRORE IN AP

Appaji Reddem, Hyderabad
The Economic Times (Bangalore edition)

Tata BP Solar, a Bangalore-based 51:49 joint venture company of BP Solar and Tata Power, is likely to invest over Rs 8,000 crore on a solar fab in Andhra Pradesh.

Representatives of the company had a meeting with state government officials on Tuesday. “The company has asked for 100 acres to set up the facility. Fab-city in Hyderabad and Vizag SEZ in Visakhapatnam are the locations being considered for setting up the facility,” Andhra Pradesh Infrastructure and Investment Corporation CMD BP Acharya said.

The company has already invested Rs 400 crore this year to manufacture 180 MW of solar cells and 125 MW of solar modules in Bangalore.

It has lined up plans to expand its capacity to over 300 MW and has set a target to become a billion-dollar company by 2012. Tata BP Solar provides services to the North East, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, educational institutions like IIT Kanpur, IIT Delhi, IIM Bangalore and the defence forces in India. It has also electrified 20 villages in Orissa.

The company recently inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Tata Agrico for distributing solar products in rural areas of the country.

It has made use of solar power in manufacturing telecom infrastructure for countries like Bhutan, Afghanistan and Pakistan. It has also exported products to countries in Western Europe and USA.

BP Solar is a part of BP Alternative Energy, which over the next 10 years aims to invest $8 billion globally in solar, wind, hydrogen and natural gas power technology. BP’s investments in India include Castrol India and Tata BP Solar. BP Solar has manufacturing facilities in Spain, US, Australia and China.

Two years ago, the Andhra Pradesh government had pipped Karnataka to host India’s first chip fab facility