Sinovel Wind Company, China's largest wind turbine manufacturer, is close to tying up with the Maharashtra-based Ghodawat Energy for renting Ghodawat's manufacturing facilities to produce Sinovel turbines.

Confirming this to Business Line , Mr Ranjit Wadhokar, Executive Director, Ghodawat Energy said that the deal between his company and Sinovel, which is the world's second largest wind turbine company (after Vestas of Denmark) could be signed soon.

A press release of Sinovel issued in May said that the company's subsidiary in India was “actively under preparation”. It also noted that its ten machines (of 1.5 MW class) supplied to India in 2009 “are operating well.”

Incidentally, Sinovel raised $1.4 billion through its IPO in January, and is looking to expanding its operations outside of China too.

The Indian customer is the Doddanavar group of Belgaum, Karnataka, which has interests in granite, iron ore and sugar. The group has put up a 15 MW farm at the Channenadaddi village near Belgaum. It is learnt that Doddanavar is looking to put up another farm in Tamil Nadu, in the Theni area. Presumably, it will use Sinovel machines.

With Doddanavar as its anchor customer, Sinovel intends to enter India, introducing the 1.5-MW turbine into India. An official of the Centre for Wind Energy Technology (C-WET) in Chennai also confirmed that Sinovel has given in an application for approval of its machines.

The Ghodawat group used to produce wind turbines under licence of Windtec of Austria. But the group has not been manufacturing any turbine in the last six months.

Meanwhile, it is learnt that another Chinese company, Ming Yang Wind Power Company, is also interested in entering India, and is on the lookout for partners. The company is interested in bringing in 2 MW machines here.

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