Thirty-four companies, including some of the largest global and domestic wind energy players, participated in the Expression of Interest (EoI) floated by the government on the plan to set up the country’s first mega offshore wind farm.
MNRE held discussions over two days last month with interested parties following the EoI. In the next stage, the ministry will design the main tender document based on the preliminary discussions with companies.
The participants included Denmark’s largest energy company Orsted; investment firm Copenhagen Infrastructure partners; Saudi Arabian Alfanar; US-based Deep Water Structures; PNE Wind, WPD Offshore Solutions, EON Climate and Senvion from Germany; Canadian Northland Power; Heerema Marine from Singapore; Macquarie Group and Innogy Renewable from UK; Equinor from Norway; Park Wind from Belgium and Saipem from Italy.
The domestic companies participated in the discussion included Van Oord, Greenko, Sterlite, Engie Energy, Mytrah, CLP, Leap Green, Torrent, Inox Wind, Terra Form Global, Suzlon, Shell India, Renew Power and Rattan India, apart from the Consortium of Offshore Wind Energy (COFWE) and I Squared Advisors.
The meeting also discussed the strategy likely to be followed by international firms for participation. Post the interaction, the ministry assured the investors the Government of India follows a transparent mechanism for bidding and selection of developers for projects. “Accordingly, there is no need to engage any agent who may claim to facilitate doing business in India,” MNRE advised the foreign investors.
The government plans to add 30 Gigawatt of offshore wind energy generation capacity by 2030 and has identified Gujarat and Tamil Nadu as potential sites. Globally, UK tops the list of offshore wind markets, followed by Germany, Taiwan, China and the USA.
Energy world