“We had planned to raise money from the IPO this year, but due to the recession, we decided to wait till a better period. We think March next year would be a good time to start the process again,” he said.
The Rs 2,000-crore company plans to complete 50 mega watt of solar power plant at Banaskantha in Gujarat by December 2010. The total cost of the project has been pegged at Rs 1,600 crore and the project deadline is March 2014. It would be the first phase completion of the 110-MW of solar power unit agreement that ACME signed with the government of Gujarat during the Vibrant Summit in January this year. The company has applied for 800 acres of land, of which 400 acres would be utilised for the first phase of 50 MW, he said.
The company has a unit for 12 MW at Bikaner in Rajasthan and is commencing a project of 150 MW distributed between Bikaner, Jodhpur and Jaisalmer. The company has units in Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh.
ACME made a $30-million equity investment in California-based eSolar earlier this year. It names ACME as the master licensee of eSolar in India and enables it to use eSolar’s technology to develop solar thermal units for other companies as well. Under the agreement, ACME will build up to 1,000 MW of solar thermal power plants over the next 10 years.
The cost of the current project is expected to be at Rs 13 a unit. Currently, 70 per cent of the components needed for generating solar power is imported, but once a certain scale is reached, ACME will manufacture the components in India, he said.
“It will help bring the cost of solar energy lower than that of coal energy,” he said. The ACME Group is in the field of energy efficient solutions for global wireless telecommunication, cold chain systems, waste water treatment and environment impact solutions, reports The Hindu Business Line.
