India's SECI to launch 4.5 GW of wind tenders in the next months

Indias's government has announced plans to tender 4.5 GW of wind projects in the next four months, which will be aimed to leverage wind power capacity in the country. 

According to sources, an auction for 1.5GW of wind capacity will be launched in October,  and later on, in December and February next year, two more wind tenders will be held.

With these new bids, the government aims to upscale the wind capacity addition in India, which has been relatively modest, this year. Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), will conduct the wind tenders.

A notice inviting tender, will be issued now for the October bid. The upcoming wind aunctions will allow developers to bid for  up to 400 MW projects.

As we reported earlier this month, the wind tariff in India touched lowest level of INR2.64(0.0404US$) per kWh in the second wind auction conducted by the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) on behalf of Ministry of New & Renewable Energy, Government of India.

Against the 1000 MW of capacity tendered, SECI received 12 bids totalling to 2892 MW capacity of which 9 bids with a cumulative capacity of 2142 MW were shortlisted for e-reverse auction.

The tariff discovered was significantly lower than first wind auction concluded at INR3.46 (US$0.0525) per kWh in February this year.

In June, we informed that SECI launched a tender process for 1,000 MW of Interstate Transmission System (ISTS)-connected wind power projects under Tranche-II. With the success of the first 1,000 MW wind auction, the MNRE decided to launch another round of wind auction for wind power projects, which will be developed on a build own and operate basis. 

SECI mandated, that developers could bid for a minimum 50 MW and maximum 250 MW capacity with an upper tariff ceiling at US$$0.062/kWh. 

The wind power deployment in India started in early 90s and with the conducive policy environment provided at Central and State level this segment has achieved highest growth amongst the other renewable energy technologies. The present wind power installed capacity in the country is nearly 32.3 GW sharing around 9.9 % of total installed capacity. 

We have lately informed about several wind projects in India:

• 40 MW Basavane Bagewadi wind park in Karnataka
• 50 MW Rojmal wind energy project in Gujarat
• 78 MW Bannur onshore wind farm in Bijapur district of Karnataka
• 100 MW wind project in Kutch, Gujarat state
• 100.8 MW Limbwas wind project in Madhya Pradesh
• 250 MW wind power project in Tamil Nadu
• 100 MW Nimbagallu wind farm in Andhra Pradesh
• 50 MW Ambah wind farm in the state of Madhya Pradesh