Originally published on CleanTechies.
The first-ever competitive auction in the wind energy sector in India has received an overwhelming response from project developers, with the tender being oversubscribed 2.6 times.
The Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) has floated India’s first wind tender for the development of 1 gigawatt of wind projects earlier this month.
The tender was oversubscribed with total 13 developers submitted bids equivalent to 2.6 gigawatts in comparison to 1 gigawatt of bids being called for. Bids were received from major giants including Adani Power, Hero Future Energies, Renew Power, and Inox Wind. Most of the developers — 69% — bid to set up projects in the state of Tamil Nadu.
The tender was floated for project sizes of 50-250 megawatts. Bidders are free to set up projects anywhere in India but are required to connect their projects to the 220 kV national grid, allowing distribution companies to purchase power anywhere.
The SECI tender is unique in two ways – first, selected bidders will sign 25 year long-term power purchase agreements with the power trading company, PTC India, which will sign back to back power purchase agreements with as yet unknown distribution companies; and second, existing operational projects and under construction projects are eligible to participate.
Most of the experts from the wind industry believe that competition like this would potentially bring down wind energy tariffs, which currently ranges from INR 3.9 to 5.9 per kWh.
Media reports suggest that wind energy tariff bids could fall to as low as INR 4.00/kWh (5.90¢/kWh) once the 1 gigawatt of wind energy capacity is auctioned and allocated to project developers over the next few days. This will mark a 20% discount to the average wind energy feed-in tariffs determined by the various state regulators across India.
Reprinted with permission.
Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!
Have a tip for CleanTechnica, want to advertise, or want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
Autonomous Drones for Better Farming
I don't like paywalls. You don't like paywalls. Who likes paywalls? Here at CleanTechnica, we implemented a limited paywall for a while, but it always felt wrong — and it was always tough to decide what we should put behind there. In theory, your most exclusive and best content goes behind a paywall. But then fewer people read it! We just don't like paywalls, and so we've decided to ditch ours. Unfortunately, the media business is still a tough, cut-throat business with tiny margins. It's a never-ending Olympic challenge to stay above water or even perhaps — gasp — grow. So ...
