Raising concerns, credit rating agency, Crisil in its latest report has said that depreciating rupee puts nearly half of the solar power capacities under implementation worth around Rs 28,000 crore at viability risk. The report also noted that import of solar modules has got costlier due to rupee fall and increased the cost of setting up solar plants.
The rating agency further mentioned about the facts related to the solar projects, saying that solar modules account for 55-60% of the project cost of a solar plant, which is typically around Rs 5 crore per MW and over 90% of them are imported at present. As per the study report, for every 10% drop in the rupee, the cost of setting up a solar power plant increases by Rs 30 lakh per MW, assuming other factors remain unchanged.
Besides, Crisil pointed that the project costs would dart up by as much as 20%, if the rupee remains weak and safeguard duty is also levied and a result of this, viable tariff for future projects will have to be higher by 30 paise per unit. Further, it added that this would impact the government's target of setting up 100 GW solar capacity by fiscal 2022.