MNRE to hold stakeholders' meet on 1,000 MW wind power auction

Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has invited stakeholders next week for consultation to firm up norms for auction of 1,000 MW grid connected wind power capacity.
"It is proposed to hold another round of consultation on August 23, 2016 with stakeholders on the revised draft guidelines for the scheme for setting up 1,000 MW wind power capacity through tariff based competitive bidding," a senior official said.
The official said the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is the nodal agency for implementing the scheme, would float tenders next month for setting up wind projects with cumulative capacity of 1,000 MW to supply power to non-windy states.

The ministry had sanctioned the scheme on June 14, 2016 and prepared a draft guideline for its implementation. These were placed on the ministry website for comments/suggestions/views of the stakeholders.
A committee was constituted to examine the comments and suggest changes in the guidelines.
Explaining further, he said this would be tariff based competitive bidding and will be awarded to bidders quoting lowest price (power tariff) bid.

At present, the rate of wind power ranges between Rs 3.9 per unit (lowest in Tamil Nadu) and Rs 5.5 per unit in other states. This bidding may result in drop in prices of wind power as happened in the case of solar power.

The New and Renewable Energy Ministry has planned to set up grid-connected 1,000 MW wind energy projects, which will supply power at price discovered through competitive bidding.
According to the scheme, the project capacity will be determined by SECI for each tender, but will not be less than 25 MW for a single project developer at one site.
The scheme for setting up of 1,000 MW wind power projects connected to transmission network of Central transmission Utility (CTU) will be implemented to supply power to discoms of non-windy states, the ministry had said in June.
The wind power deployment in the country started in early 90s. The present wind power installed capacity is nearly 26.7 GW, sharing around 9 per cent of the total installed capacity.

Globally, India is at 4th position in terms of wind power installed capacity after China, the US and Germany. The Centre has set an ambitious target of achieving 175 GW power capacity from renewable energy resources by 2022 and out of this 60 GW has to come from wind power.