Gamesa’s Indian installations cross 5.5-GW mark

The Indian subsidiary of the global wind power major, Siemens Gamesa, has achieved a milestone of crossing 5,500 MW of installed capacity in India with its recent winnings of two orders for its wind turbines from the renewable energy company, ReNew Power.

Ramesh Kymal, Chairman and Managing Director of Siemens Gamesa India told BusinessLine that the company “on the threshold of signing a few more contracts” and hence the company would end the financial year 2018-19 with total sales in India of 6,000 MW. The Spanish company, since taken over by Siemens of Germany, sold its first turbine in India in 2010.

Goldman Sachs-backed ReNew, one of the larger wind and solar companies in India, recently placed two orders on Siemens Gamesa for two of its projects – 100.8 MW for a project it won in a Gujarat tender, and another 76 MW it won in the second round of auctions conducted by the central government-owned SECI. The 76MW project is to come up in Maharashtra. With these orders, Siemens Gamesa’s factory near Chennai will be busy making 48 turbines of 2.1 MW of capacity each for the Gujarat order, and 38 machines of 2 MW each for the Maharashtra project.

Auctions slowing down

On the present state of the wind industry, Kymal observed that tendering process had slowed down after plebeian response from the industry to the 5th round of auctions of SECI. The ‘SECI V’ auctions, initially for 2,000 MW, was later re-tendered for 1,200 MW. There has been another capacity auction conducted by the state-owned power producer, NTPC, for another 1,200 MW. Save these 2,400 MW there have been no auctions in the recent past, though the government has assured the industry it would put through tenders for 10,000 MW, Kymal said.

Also, the upper cap of ₹2.50 a kWhr that the government is trying to bring in is proving to be a “dampener”, he said. Many in the industry have rue the upper limit for electricity prices that could be quoted in a tariff-based tender, which is seen as one-sided in government’s favour, sitting between fixed tariffs and marked determined tariffs. “Tariffs will go up,” cautioned Kymal, noting that prices of steel and crude had gone up, impacting raw material and logistics costs. Also, the windiest sites have been taken, and the upcoming projects would be put up only on 2nd or 3rd grade lands, where with slower winds, annual electricity generation would be lower.

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