Chinese turbine maker bags 2 orders in India

Chinese wind turbine manufacturer Envision Wind Power Technologies has bagged two orders from Indian wind energy companies.

The company is also close to introducing a 4.5-MW turbine, which will be the biggest to be offered for sale in India for onshore applications.

The first of the two orders won by Envision Wind is for 197.5 MW from the Actis-backed Sprng Energy, and the second is from ReNew Power for 35 MW. Both Sprng and ReNew will use Envision’s turbines for their upcoming projects in Gujarat, won in a tender floated last December by the State utility Gujarat Urja Vikas Nigam Ltd.

The two companies will sell electricity to the State’s utility at tariffs of ₹2.43/unit and ₹2.45, respectively.

This is the first time that a Chinese wind turbine company has won sizeable orders in India. Earlier, at least two other Chinese companies — Sinovel (which was once the world’s biggest seller of wind turbines) and Ming Yang — attempted in vain to break into the Indian market, the latter as a joint venture partner of Reliance ADA Group’s Global Wind Power.

These orders were won a few months back, but the company’s machine was approved for installation in India only recently, Mel Badheka, Senior Director, Business Development of Envision Wind, told BusinessLine , in New Delhi last week.

Envision has invested around $20 million to set up manufacturing (assembly) facilities at Chakan, Pune, he said. The company outsources most of the components and hence can flexibly make from 12 to 40 turbines a month, he said.

The turbines sold to Sprng and ReNew are of nominal capacity of 2.5 MW each, and the blades will describe a circle of 131 metres diameter — sweeping an area equivalent to two-and-a-half football fields. The machine would stand atop a 120-m tubular tower and will begin to spin at wind speeds of 3.5 metres per second.

Envision is also working towards launching two new machines in India — of nominal capacities of 3 MW and 4.5 MW, whose blades will sweep an area equivalent to 2.8 and 3.2 football fields, respectively. The latter would be the biggest in the country.

Maintenance contracts

Badheka said that Envision has also won a job from a wind energy company, whose name he did not wish to disclose, for operating and maintaining the energy company’s 1-GW wind farm. He said that Envision’s strengths were in digitalising and IoT-enabling wind farms in order to improve efficiency.

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