Emcure Pharmaceuticals has signed a power purchase agreement with Sunsure Energy for solar power from a 150 MW plant in Solapur, Maharashtra. The contract covers about 36 GWh a year, enough for roughly two thirds of what Emcure's Pune factories use. Emcure is not the only drug maker drawing on that plant. A month later, a second pharmaceutical company signed up for almost the same slice.
Key takeaways
- Emcure Pharmaceuticals signed a PPA with Sunsure Energy, announced on 25 July 2024, for 22.78 MW of capacity and about 36 GWh of annual solar energy from Sunsure's 150 MW solar plant in Solapur, Maharashtra.
- The Sunsure power will supply the Pune manufacturing plants of Emcure Pharmaceuticals and its subsidiary Gennova Biopharmaceuticals, and is expected to meet around 67 percent of those plants' power requirements.
- Sandoz signed a separate PPA with Sunsure Energy for the same 150 MW Solapur solar plant, announced on 29 August 2024, covering 20.33 MW and 32 GWh a year for its plant in Navi Mumbai.
- The Sunsure Solapur plant is expected to produce 236 GWh a year, so the Emcure and Sandoz contracts together account for about 68 GWh, or roughly 29 percent of its output.
- Neither the Emcure nor the Sandoz contract with Sunsure Energy discloses a tariff or a contract length in Enerdatics' records.
How can one solar plant serve two drug makers?
Because the plant is offsite and the power travels through the grid. An offsite PPA is a contract in which the generator and the buyer sit in different places, and the electricity is delivered over the public network rather than by a direct wire. Solapur and Pune are separate districts of Maharashtra, and Navi Mumbai is further still. None of the three buyers needs to be anywhere near the panels.
That makes a large plant divisible. Sunsure can build once at a scale that keeps costs down, then sell the output in slices sized to each customer's load. Emcure's slice is 22.78 MW and Sandoz's is 20.33 MW, close enough in size to suggest the plant was designed around customers of this scale rather than one anchor buyer.
The arrangement also explains why a buyer of Emcure's size does not build its own plant. A 22.78 MW share of a 150 MW project carries none of the land, permitting or construction work of a standalone site. Emcure gets a defined volume of solar energy for its factories and leaves the asset with the developer.
What does 67 percent of the Pune plants' demand tell us?
It tells us the contract is sized to the load, not to a round number. Sunsure's supply of about 36 GWh is described as meeting around two thirds of what the Emcure and Gennova plants in Pune need. Working backwards, the two sites use somewhere in the region of 54 GWh a year in total.
Covering two thirds rather than all of it is a practical choice. Solar produces only in daylight, and factories that run around the clock still need power at night. A buyer that contracted for its full annual volume from solar alone would find itself with surplus at midday and a gap after dark. Stopping at about two thirds leaves room for grid supply to fill the hours solar cannot.
The capacity and energy figures are also consistent with each other. Spreading 36 GWh across 22.78 MW for a year implies a capacity utilisation of about 18 percent. The plant as a whole is expected to produce 236 GWh on 150 MW, which works out at almost exactly the same rate.
Why does the contract carry no price?
Because corporate PPAs in India are bilateral deals, and neither side has to publish terms. Contracts with state agencies are different. When the Solar Energy Corporation of India or a state distribution company buys power, the tariff usually comes out of a public auction, and it is announced along with the award. That is why prices such as the Solar Energy Corporation of India tariff for Solarpack's Gorbea project are visible while a factory's supply contract is not.
The missing duration matters as much as the missing price. Sunsure's earlier contract with KSB Limited, announced in January 2024, runs for 25 years, but Enerdatics' records give no term for either the Emcure or the Sandoz agreement. Without it, the 36 GWh figure is an annual volume with no stated horizon.
Enerdatics records 85 solar PPAs in India announced during 2024. Fifty of them carry a disclosed tariff, and almost all of those were signed with state agencies, utilities or public bodies. The offsite contracts among them priced between about $26 and $42 per MWh. Of the 19 offsite solar PPAs signed with corporate buyers that year, including those with Emcure, Sandoz, Equinix, Google and Henkel, none discloses a tariff. Sunsure appears as the supplier in three of the 2024 contracts: KSB in January, Emcure in July and Sandoz in August.
What does the deal signal for India's corporate solar market?
It signals that the developers serving Indian industry are building plants as shared supply pools rather than one-customer projects. The Solapur plant has two named pharmaceutical buyers taking about 29 percent of its expected output between them. The remaining capacity is not attributed to any buyer in Enerdatics' records, which leaves room for more contracts of the same kind.
For buyers, the model lowers the bar to entry. A company that needs 20 to 25 MW can sign for it without owning land or managing construction, and can size the volume to match its daytime load. That is particularly suited to manufacturers with continuous processes, where a firm share of daytime demand can be moved to solar while night supply stays with the grid.
For the market as a whole, the deal shows how much of India's corporate solar activity happens out of view. The utility side of the market publishes a price for almost every contract. The corporate side, which is where companies such as Emcure buy, publishes almost none. Large comparisons such as ReNew's sale of a 300 MW Rajasthan solar plant to IndiGrid show what operating capacity is worth to investors, but the revenue side of a shared corporate plant remains hard to observe.
Frequently asked questions
How much solar power will Emcure buy from Sunsure Energy? Emcure's PPA with Sunsure covers 22.78 MW of capacity and about 36 GWh of energy a year from Sunsure's 150 MW solar plant in Solapur, Maharashtra. The power will supply Emcure's and Gennova Biopharmaceuticals' plants in Pune.
Who else buys power from Sunsure's Solapur solar plant? Sandoz signed a separate PPA with Sunsure for the same plant, announced on 29 August 2024. It covers 20.33 MW and 32 GWh a year for Sandoz's plant in Navi Mumbai.
What is the tariff in the Emcure and Sunsure PPA? The tariff has not been disclosed, and Enerdatics' records give no contract length. None of the 19 offsite corporate solar PPAs Enerdatics records in India for 2024 discloses a tariff.
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