With the Indian government looking to launch a major auction roadmap for the wind energy market several foreign wind turbine manufacturing companies are looking to capture a market share.
German turbine manufacturers Nordex and Senvion have announced the launch of new models in India. Interestingly, both these companies recently acquired other manufacturers. The new models are among the largest available in India and may attract project developers who cannot access high wind density project sites.
Senvion announced the launch of 2.3 megawatt and 2.4 megawatt turbines with rotor diameters between 110 meters and 124 meters. The turbines are based on platform developed by Kenersys, an Indian company acquired by Senvion last year, but optimised using Senvion technology.
Senvion took over a turbine manufacturing unit of Kenersys located in Maharashtra that has an annual production capacity of 250 megawatts. It will also took control of 220 MW of operational wind energy assets of the Indian company.
Nordex launched a 3 megawatt model designed on platform of Acciona Wind Power. The model will, again, be one of the largest capacity models available in the Indian market. Nodrex acquired the wind turbine manufacturing unit of Spanish utility Acciona in April 2016.
Both turbine manufacturers are eyeing project developers with low-wind sites. Almost all high wind density sites have already been grabbed under the feed-in tariff scheme. Central as well as state governments are now looking to shift to auction-based allocation of wind projects which will increase competition not only for tariffs as well as suitable project sites.
The Indian government recently concluded the first-ever auction in wind energy market which yielded the lowest-ever tariff of Rs 3.46/kWh (5.4¢/kWh). The government now plans to auction 4,000 megawatts wind energy capacity by March 2018 and 5,000-6,000 megawatts auction every year till 2022. This will help India reach installed capacity target of 60 gigawatts in the wind energy sector by March 2022.