State-owned Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) is planning to issue a tender for a concentrated solar-thermal power (CSP) storage project by next year.

The tender is in the designing stage and will be issued for an initial capacity of 500 megawatt (MW) round-the-clock green energy.

Probable locations for the project development will be Gujarat, Rajasthan, or Andhra Pradesh due to higher solar radiation in these states, SECI's Chairman and Managing Director R P Gupta said.

"This will be the first of its kind tender in India... We have already received interest from industry players on this," said Gupta.

In CSP projects, solar power is concentrated through mirrors at a focal point where a high temperature fluid or a salt mixture is heated up, the steam thus produced is then used to run turbines.