Spanish wind turbine maker Gamesa Corp Tecnologica SA expects to see a five-fold rise in its India sales in 2013-14, even as the domestic wind power industry is headed for a tepid close of the year.

Gamesa India has already sold wind turbines worth 145 MW this year, and 455 MW worth of turbines are under “advanced stages of implementation”, which will be completed in the last quarter of the fiscal. With this, the company expects to close the year with 600 MW of sales, compared with 115 MW in 2012-13.

Gamesa India’s Chairman and Managing Director Ramesh Kymal told Business Line that the company expects sales of 800 MW in 2014-15, given that it has sufficient land under its control to install 4,000 MW more.

“We do not own all the land, but we have agreements in place that give us rights to put up projects,” Kymal said, adding the lands were in Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

However, the total capacity edition in the wind power space in the country may not exceed last year’s 1,700 MW. Nor is there too much hope for 2014-15, as the wind season begins early summer and with the elections round the corner, not much action is expected to take place.

Gamesa has also stepped up indigenisation, to 85 per cent, of its 2 MW turbine launched two years ago. All components except control panels and brake systems are bought locally.

This localisation, Kymal said, does not give Gamesa an immediate cost advantage, but would serve the company good in the long run.

Gamesa’s production has just moved from a manufacturing unit north of Chennai, to a recently-built factory south of the city--at the village of Mamandur. There is scope to develop a vendor park near the new location.

Gamesa, one of the top-five wind turbine makers in the world, has invested Rs 1,500 crore in India in the last four years.

ramesh.m@thehindu.co.in

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