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Renewable power producer BluPine Energy is eyeing to create 4 gigawatts (GW) of solar and wind power as well as hybrid assets complemented with battery energy storage (BES) in the next five years in India.
Elaborating on India’s strategy, BluPine Energy CEO Neerav Nanavaty told businessline, “In our case, the fund (Actis) is $5.5 billion globally, of which $800 million is allocated to BluPine. The focus is exclusively on renewable assets, exclusively in India.”
The company, backed by global infrastructure investor Actis, will take both the organic and inorganic route to add renewable energy (RE) capacities. It has already acquired 400 megawatts (MW) of solar power capacity from the Atha Group and is in advanced talks to acquire around 400 MW more.
Actis has already created and monetised two RE independent power producers (IPPs), Ostro Energy and Sprng Energy for roughly $3 billion. It has earmarked $800 million to BluPine Energy, which is more than the combined $755 MW invested in both the RE IPPs.
Organic growth
On organic additions, Nanavaty said BluPine is already working on 650 MW of assets in Gujarat and 150 MW in Rajasthan. Besides, the company also secured a tender for 150 MW, which is a combination of wind, solar and battery storage and is expected to come up in Karnataka.
BluPine Energy’s project capacities under implementation is around 1.35 GW, which also includes two recently won tenders of 300 MW and 100 MW from SJVN and Gujarat Urja Vikas Nigam (GUVNL).
Nanavaty said the company’s focus is to add capacities across commercial and industrial (C&I) as well as solar and wind power to reach the 4 GW target.
Its C&I portfolio has capacity under works of 300-400 MW across Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh, which it will scale up to 750-1,000 MW.
“Today, we are at 300 MW megawatts for wind and I think we will add another 300-500 MW roughly and then solar will form the largest chunk of the portfolio. My sense is around 2 GW. Of course, as things change, we will also adapt,” he explained.
When asked about the time it will take to reach 4 GW, Nanavaty said, “Our deployment is $800 million, which is more than those two combined (Ostro and Sprng). So what that automatically means is that our deployment cycle will be a little longer, because we have much more capital to deploy. Also, we are not in the feed-in-tariff regime any more. So it’s a competitive market. My sense is it will take us probably somewhere between 6-7 years. We’ve already been on the journey for two years. So, give us another years, and I think we should be fully deployed.”
Inorganic push
On the company’s acquisition of around 400 MW solar capacity, Nanavaty said “We are in the final stages of discussions and will announce it shortly.”
On future acquisitions, he said “We are always scouting for wind and solar. Atha Group is a good example. They built a bunch of good assets, but it was not their primary business. So, we came in, bought those assets and optimised the business. So we are always on the look out for distress portfolios or portfolios where people build them but it is not their primary business.”
Nanavaty emphasised that now the focus is on greenfield additions. “That’s where our bread and butter is,” he noted.
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