19 May 2023
Everworld
interviews
He said bringing the costs down for offshore wind projects is fundamental to get the industry moving forward
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 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.
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