The Access to Energy in Rural Areas under the Indo-German Energy Programme (IGEN- Access) is a bilateral technical co-operation measure between the Federal Ministry for Economic Co-operation and Development (BMZ), Germany and the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), Government of India. IGEN-Access was commissioned by BMZ based on the lessons learnt over the past four years (2011 – 2015) under the Renewable Energy Component of the Indo-German Energy Programme (IGEN-RE). IGEN – Access aims to improve the sector environment for inclusive rural energy enterprises.

The Electricity Act of 2003 was enacted with the overall objective of developing the electricity industry and providing electricity to all areas. The act also opened the door to renewable energy based off-grid generation. The Distributed Decentralized Generation (DDG) scheme under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyut Yojana (RGGVY) of Ministry of Power, Village Energy Security Project and Remote village Electrification (RVE) schemes of MNRE, different state governments, corporate sectors and funding agencies have utilized their resources in providing access to energy in rural areas. Some of these programme not only provided access to energy to rural households but also energy for productive activities. Most of these executed projects are operated and managed by Energy Committees (ECs) or similar kind of committees. Despite the efforts of government and other agencies, it has been observed that the sustainability of the projects, especially the off-grid projects, is limited. It has been observed that community management system did not create adequate incentives for sustainable operation.

Given that such infrastructure (off grid power plants) is under-utilized, efforts should be made to experiment with involving the private sector for the revival of these plants. Given the complexity of the rural context, creating space for the private financing and the challenges of ensuring sustainability have led to mixed results so far. However, it is a worthy exercise to explore the option of involving private sector participation in revival of off-grid projects.

The current terms of reference pertains to engaging a consultant to develop market based approach for revival of existing underutilized off grid projects with the participation of private players and local communities

The detailed documentation with regards to this call for proposals includes –

• The Terms of Reference for the Assignment
• The Technical Evaluation Grid
• Bidding Conditions
• The General Terms & Conditions of Contracts

Timeline

Deadline to receive queries                                    : 23rd Dec’ 2015
Clarifications to the queries                                   : 24th Dec 2015
The deadline for submission of proposal is           : 11th January 2016 by 17:30hrs