According to the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), wind power projects with the capacity of over 12 GW have been awarded across the country against 15.1 GW of total bids, which have been issued so far.

According to Mercom India Research, over 5 GW of wind projects have been tendered in CY 2019, of which 3 GW has been auctioned so far in 2019, due to under-subscription of tenders. In 2019, wind power tariffs were at ₹2.80 (~$0.039)/kWh range. Mercom last year reported that approximately 9.5 GW of wind projects had been auctioned as of Dec 2018 since the inception of e-reverse auctions.

The government has set a target of installing 60 GW of wind power capacity by 2022. According to MNRE, cumulative wind power installations in India have crossed 37 GW mark and stood at 37,090.03 MW as of October 2019. As per Mercom’s recent article, wind power accounts for nearly 10.1% of the overall power capacity mix in India.

The state of Tamil Nadu has the highest wind power capacity of 9,232 MW, followed by Gujarat at 7,204MW. Subsequently, Maharashtra and Karnataka have cumulative wind power installations of 4,794 MW and 4,753 MW respectively. Followed by Rajasthan accounted for 4,300 MW, Andra Pradesh with 4,092 MW, and Madhya Pradesh stood at 2,520 MW installed wind capacity at the end of October 2019.

During the Question Hour in the Rajya Sabha, Ministry of Power R.K. Singh said that the government is promoting wind power projects through private sector investment and accelerated depreciation benefit and concessional custom duty exemption on certain components of wind electric generators.

The government issued the guidelines for the tariff-based competitive bidding process for the procurement of power from grid-connected wind power projects in December 2017. The primary aim of the guidelines is to provide a framework for the cost-effective procurement of wind power using a transparent bidding process.

In July 2019, Mercom reported that the Ministry of Power (MoP) amended the competitive bidding guidelines for the procurement of power from grid-connected wind energy projects. This is the first time that such guidelines have been amended since their formulation in December 2017.

Singh also informed the House that generation-based incentive (GBI) is available for wind projects which were commissioned before March 31, 2017.

According to Singh, apart from fiscal and other incentives, technical support, including wind resource assessment and identification of potential sites is also being provided through the National Institute of Wind Energy, Chennai.

Image credit: Invenergy