India, a key market for Spanish wind major Gamesa

Last year, one-fifth of Gamesa Corporación Tecnológica revenues came from India, almost twice as much as in the previous year. Gamesa Corp achieved turnover of Euro 2.33 billion in 2013, compared with Euro 2.66 billion in the previous year, but India’s contribution rose from 12 per cent to 22 per cent.

“And this will increase,” says Ramesh Kymal, Chairman and Managing Director of Gamesa India — confidently, with 203 MW of wind turbines only a couple of screw turns away from commissioning and orders worth another 600 MW on hand, to be executed in 2014. In the financial year 2013-14, Gamesa India topped the list of wind turbine manufacturers, with sales of 425 MW.

The company has developed a strong “megawatt pipeline”, which refers to readiness to execute orders after completing all the preparatory work such as acquiring land and securing approvals. “We are the darling of the IPPs”, said Kymal today, at a press conference to note the company’s completion of 1,000 MW of capacity in India, which it has done in four years of inception. IPPs, or Independent Power Producers are companies that are in the business of generating and selling electricity to distribution companies.

Since it set up shop in India in 2009, Gamesa has invested Rs 1,500 crore in factories that produce turbines, towers and blades.

Answering a question, Kymal said that it was a myth that the wind mills produced fickle power, making it difficult for distribution companies to commit sales to its customers. The view that ‘wind is infirm’ is primarily what caused the electricity distribution company in India’s windiest state, Tamil Nadu, to discourage fresh capacity addition in the state. As a result, capacity-adds in the state fell from over 1,000 MW in 2011-12 to around 113 MW in 2013-14.

“It is wrong to say that wind power is infirm,” said Kymal, stressing that during the wind seasons wind turbines do produce a steady stream of power. There could be a day or two in a month when wind may not blow and consequently there might be no generation, but such suspensions of production happen in other power plants too. For instance, thermal power plants shut down or produce small amounts of power when they run out of coal, he said.

COMMENT NOW