A State Electricity Regulatory Commission has directed compensation in favour of a solar power developer, referred to here as Rukmani Solar Energy Pvt. Ltd., after finding that delay in commissioning a grid-side pooling substation. Work that fell squarely within the state transmission utility's own scope, not the developer's: pushed back the project's Scheduled Commercial Operation Date by several months, exposing the developer to liquidated damages risk under its Power Purchase Agreement that it argued was not of its own making.
The transmission utility contended that the delay was attributable to right-of-way and land-acquisition difficulties for the connecting transmission line, which it characterised as force majeure rather than its own default. The Commission rejected this characterisation, holding that land-acquisition and right-of-way procurement for evacuation infrastructure is a foreseeable, manageable part of a transmission utility's core project-execution responsibility, not an unforeseeable event, and that treating routine land-acquisition friction as force majeure would effectively immunise transmission utilities from accountability for a large share of typical project delays.
The Commission directed that the developer's Scheduled Commercial Operation Date be correspondingly extended without imposition of liquidated damages, and separately directed the transmission utility to compensate the developer for demonstrable revenue loss attributable to the delay period, to be computed against the tariff the project would otherwise have earned.
The order is a useful precedent for renewable developers facing evacuation-infrastructure delays outside their control, confirming that routine land-acquisition friction on the utility's side of the project does not qualify as force majeure and can support a compensation claim rather than simply a timeline extension.