Can India See Large Wind Turbines Beyond 6 MW?

More wind companies in India are now offering large wind turbines.

The upper ceiling of large wind turbines in India is on the rise. Irrespective of the deployment of the same in capacities upto 8 MW to 10 MW in foreign countries like China, India’s tryst with these large structures is limited by costs for now.

Going by the government numbers, there are more than eight wind turbine manufacturers operating in the Indian wind energy market, offering wind turbines having capacities beyond 3 MW. Companies like Suzlon had often bragged about getting multiple orders for its 3.15 MW wind turbines. Inox Wind also admits that their 3 MW wind turbine series has helped them in getting a bulging order book.

On the other hand, Adani Wind created ripples last year with the launch of its 5.2 MW wind turbines and installed it at Khavda. However, can we expect large onshore wind turbines, beyond 6 MW capacity? Based on the local geographical conditions and experience of the renewable project developers, the answer is not very encouraging.

Is India Ready To Welcome Its Largest Ever Wind Turbines?

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4MW+ Wind Turbine Is The New Target 

In the latest investors call, Inox Wind flaunted the increased sales of its 3 MW series wind turbines. It also announced the rolling out of its proposed 4 MW+ wind turbines in the next financial year. However, it was cautious about planning very large turbines for the Indian market. His skepticism emanates from the local geographical conditions.

When recently asked about the plans of Inox Wind to go beyond 5 MW wind turbines, the top management of the firm cited the reasons and logic behind these structures for the Indian market.

“Look, what’s important for us is the cost of energy. We are not driven by the nomenclature of turbines or 6-megawatt or  8-megawatt or 20-megawatt and 30-megawatt turbines. India is a class three site, a low-wind site. And to that extent, if we can launch larger blades on our 2-megawatt product or our 3-megawatt product, that would be far more cost-efficient than any other larger turbine. Having said that, the product we have, which is virtually a 4.5 to 5-megawatt turbine, has one of the largest rotor diameters in the industry with the potential to add larger rotor diameters. So, to that extent, I don’t see a product about that which we need to launch in the near future. But yes, we have access to enough technologies. As we feel it’s appropriate, we will bring them to the market,” Devansh Jain, Executive Director of Inox Wind told investors.

Geography Affects Deployment 

Varchasvi Gagal, CEO of Datta Power Infra told Saur Energy a number of Indian and other wind energy companies are now offering large wind turbines beyond 3 MW series. He, however, said that the deployment of the same also depends on the geography.

“The best yield from the 3MW series is coming from the high wind zones in regions like Madhya Pradesh. We are yet to see the deliveries of very large turbines in India Most of the largest ever wind turbines are likely to be deployed for offshore wind turbines. We have seen firms like SANY, WEG and others coming up with large sized turbines. Sooner, the 3.3 MW wind turbines will be replaced by 4 MW+ wind turbines. They are more suited for high wind zones while in other regions, smaller wind turbines or 3 MW wind turbines will be more beneficial,” Gagal said.

Datta Power is one of the renewable project developers which recently won a wind-solar hybrid energy project from SJVN with a tariff of Rs 3.19/kWh. Most companies said with higher wind turbines the levelised cost of energy (LCOE) goes down besides reducing the requirement of space for producing the same amount of electricity.

Good Days Ahead 

With more hybrid projects coming to the fore, the adoption of wind energy projects has increased while the cost of these projects has also become more competitive in the Indian wind market. The pish towards hybrid tenders coupled with faster than expected drops in storage costs has also eased pressure on wind manufacturers to cut prices.

“Finally, a brief overview of the macro-outlook which continues to be highly favorable. In the current financial year, around 12 gigawatts of new wind hybrid FDRE tenders have been awarded. Tariff continues to be very competitive ranging at around Rs. 3.3 per unit for wind solar hybrid, Rs. 3.6 to 3.68 per unit for plain vanilla wind and Rs. 4.37 per unit for FDRE projects in the recent option. Demand from the C&I segment, which is over and above these figures, has continued to gain pace,” Kailash Tarachandani, Group CEO of Inox Wind told his investors in a recent investors call.