Coal India has secured a significant order worth Rs 2831.11 Cr from Bundelkhand Saur Urja Limited for the development of a 600 MW solar power project. The Letter of Award mandates the establishment of the plant at Jalaun Solar Park in Uttar Pradesh, marking a major expansion into renewable energy generation for the state-owned miner. The project will be developed in two phases of 300 MW each.

The contract stipulates a tariff rate of Rs 2.73/kWh for the power generated. Coal India is required to submit necessary documents as per the Letter of Award and subsequently sign the Power Purchase Agreement (PPA), Inter-State Transmission System Agreement (ISTA), and Land Use Rights Agreement (LURA). A key condition requires the submission of upfront solar park development charges before the signing of the ISTA by Coal India.

Project Details and Timeline

The order was awarded by a domestic entity, and the execution timeline is set at 18 months from the signing of the PPA. The company confirmed that the promoter, promoter group, or group companies hold no interest in the entity awarding the contract. Furthermore, the transaction does not fall under related party transactions.

The following table outlines the key particulars of the order:

The disclosure was made to the exchanges in compliance with Regulation 30 of the SEBI LODR Regulations, 2015. The filing was signed by Bijay Prakash Dubey, Executive Director (Company Secretary) and Compliance Officer.

Coal India has intensified its Research & Development (R&D) initiatives, planning to invest a total of around ₹1,900 crore by FY2030 to drive technological transformation and future growth. The company's R&D expenditure increased four-fold to ₹245 crore in FY 2024-25, up from ₹61 crore in FY 2023-24, reflecting a significant shift in focus from proof-of-concept studies to prototype development corresponding to Technology Readiness Level (TRL)-4 and above.

Strategic R&D Framework

The company's transformational R&D thrust gathered momentum in FY 2024-25 with the establishment of the National Centre for Coal and Energy Research (NaCCER), operating on a hub-and-spoke model. To strengthen industry-academia collaboration, Coal India has set up three Centres of Excellence (CoE) at premier IITs: Centre of Clean Coal Energy and Net Zero (CLEANZ) in Hyderabad, Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE) in Madras, and Innovation in Mining (IMiN) at IIT (ISM) Dhanbad. The Department of Public Enterprises mandates annual R&D expenditure averaging one percent of the Profit Before Tax of the preceding three years.

Projects and Collaborations

Coal India has committed ₹253 crore, to be released in phases, to the CoEs. Currently, 19 R&D projects with a total outlay of ₹225 crore are being executed by scientific institutions under NaCCER, alongside 13 pilot-scale research projects in the CoEs. The research portfolio spans clean coal energy, carbon capture, rare earth recovery, and sustainable materials. International collaborations include partnerships with Ergo Exergy (Canada) for underground coal gasification, Ericsson (Sweden) for 5G technologies, and CSIRO (Australia) for collaborative research.