Solar Energy Corporation of India requests bids for 2 GW wind projects

This article is part of a daily series of IPP articles. If you want to know more about the latest power generation projects globally visit our IPP Today section. You can receive them by email on a daily basis.

Solar Energy Corporation of India Ltd (SECI), an entity of the Indian government, has released the request for selection (RfS) document for the construction of 2 GW of wind projects to be connected to the country's inter-state transmission system (ISTS).

The documents outline that interested parties must bid for projects between 50 MW and 400 MW in size. The 400 MW limit applies to bidders' parent and affiliate companies.

Bidders must be experienced wind power developers. One must have either:

• Owned a wind power project of a minimum capacity of 25 MW at one location continuously for more than one year 
• Commissioned a wind power project of minimum capacity of 25 MW at one location as an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor
• Installed a wind power project of minimum capacity of 25 MW at one location 
• Completed the financial closure of at least 50 MW wind power projects that are currently in execution 

The deadline for submitting bids is January 16, 2018. The date and time of the subsequent PPA price auction will be emailed to eligible bidders. For more information, see the Business Opportunity.

Successful bidders will set up wind power projects on Built Own Operate (BOO) basis. They will enter into 25-year power purchase agreements (PPAs) with SECI. The power from the wind facilities will be available to distribution companies (discoms) of non-windy states to buy to meet their renewable purchase obligations.

India is in a process of transitioning from feed-in tariffs (FiTs) to auctions in the wind sector. The government's first 1-GW wind auction achieved a price of INR 3.46 (USD 0.053/EUR 0.045) per kWh and was followed by a second 1-GW tender, concluded in October, that resulted in a price of INR 2.64 per kWh.

The government began deploying wind power in the early ‘90s. Thanks to a conducive policy environment provided at Central and State level, this sector has achieved the highest growth of all renewable energy technologies. The present wind power installed capacity in India is nearly 32.5 GW, around 9% of total installed capacity. This places India 4th in the world in terms of wind power installed capacity after China, USA and Germany.

The government of India has set an ambitious target of achieving 175 GW power capacity from renewable energy resources by 2022. 60 GW is to come from wind power. The strategy for achieving this includes plans for tenders for at least 3 GW of wind and up to 17 GW of solar power capacity by March 2018. The National Institute of Wind Energy (NIWE) has estimated that the national wind power potential is over 302 GW.