Sumant Sinha’s formula to get India’s offshore wind sector moving, ET EnergyWorld


New Delhi: India needs collaboration between government and private sector, financing mechanisms, and robust supply chain to bring down costs for offshore wind energy projects, said Sumant Sinha, founder and chief executive officer, ReNew, at an event here recently.

He is said bringing the costs down for offshore wind projects is fundamental to get the industry moving forward.

“For this, first we need collaboration between the government and the private sector. Within the private sector, we need collaboration between domestic and international companies. This is because domestic companies do not have expertise in offshore and overseas companies do not have expertise in India,” said Sinha.

He was speaking at a seminar on offshore wind as a side event of the Energy Transition Working Group meeting as part of the G20 deliberations in Mumbai.

He also said that collaboration between independent power producers and wind OEMs is also required as more customised turbines need to be designed for the India environment.

“Secondly, we need to bring financing mechanisms which can bring costs down. Whether the government can work with multilateral banks on getting specific lines put in place to encourage offshore wind could be an important aspect for cost reduction. We also need long-term PPAs that allow us to take long term debt financing which would help in reducing the costs as well,” he added.

Third, is supply chain resilience. Rather than retrofitting turbines made for somewhere else and making them work for Indian conditions, costs can be saved if turbines are designed specific to Indian wind conditions. He added that there is a lot of value sitting in designing India specific wind turbines.

Sinha also said that catapulting the offshore wind sector also requires customised ships which are used for installing wind turbines offshore.

“This is a constraining factor globally. Getting the supply chain resources into the Indian context is something we will all have to work on collectively,” he said.

Apart from this, various other measures such as the requirement of cables, which are currently experiencing a shortage globally, is also required for such plants. Along with this, India needs trained workforce, which otherwise will have to be exported from wherever it is available.

“We also need masts for measuring wind offshore to understand the wind scenario and better design these offshore wind farms. Whether it is LiDAR or virtual mast, we need more data… Lastly, we need to have transmission infrastructure because ultimately all of this has to connect with substations onshore,” added Sinha.

The ministry of new and renewable energy had recently released the renewable energy bidding trajectory of 50-GW annual capacity addition to reach the 500 GW target by 2030. Of this, 40 GW was for solar energy projects and 10 GW was slated for wind energy projects.

  • Published On May 18, 2023 at 05:21 PM IST

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