Tamil Nadu is one of India's leading states for wind and solar energy, and renewable projects are built on a stack of contracts: power purchase agreements, engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts, operation and maintenance agreements, equipment supply contracts and land lease agreements.
EPC and equipment disputes are among the most common: delay in commissioning, performance shortfalls against guaranteed generation, defects in modules or turbines, and liquidated damages. These are classic arbitration disputes, requiring technical and financial analysis that a specialist tribunal can handle efficiently.
Disputes involving tariffs and regulated power purchase arrangements require care. Where the dispute involves a generating company and a distribution licensee and concerns regulated matters, the Electricity Act, 2003 gives the appropriate electricity regulatory commission the power to adjudicate or refer disputes to arbitration. Parties should check which forum the statute assigns before invoking a contractual clause.
Change in law claims — for new taxes, duties or regulations affecting project costs — are another frequent source of disputes, and depend heavily on how the PPA defines change in law and the compensation mechanism.
For developers, EPC contractors and investors, the key is to align the dispute resolution clauses across the contract stack, so that related disputes can, where possible, be heard together rather than in separate forums with the risk of inconsistent outcomes.