Suzlon Sees Increased Demand Behind Its Surged EPC Business

Indian wind turbine manufacturer Suzlon claimed that the increased demand in the wind energy market and the wide range of services rendered by the company led to its increase EPC market. The information was shared by the top officials at the recent investors call. 

“..more is coming in because of the demand from the market. It’s not that we want to do more EPC, but there’s a demand from the market. Because as I said sometime back, there is no OEM left in the country other than us who does EPC. Even the largest competition in the market are just supplying the components. They don’t even supply the turbine, they just supply the tower, they just supply the nacelle, and even the blades, somebody wants they can buy directly. But someone else has to bridge the gap between the turbine supply to, commissioning, BOP, and everything,” JP Chalasani, Group CEO of Suzlon said.

He also said that the firm had an order book of 1,613 MW as on September 2023. “In addition to this, we also have a very strong order pipeline, and recently, we announced an order from Juniper of 50.4 megawatts. Our priority going forward is to pursue quality orders
with higher value and better margins. The process for RLMM listing for 3 megawatt turbine has been completed from our side, and we expect this to be listed as early as next week,” he added.

He also said that while India witnessed 1.5GW of wind capacity addition tin H1 this year and might end up adding a total of 4.5 GW-5GW by the end of this year. Chalasani said that the total wind power additions in India in FY25 might touch 7GW.

“We gave our estimate earlier, also we gave it that we expect anywhere midpoint is 4.5, 4 (GW) minimum and 5 GW max this year is what our expectation is. And even if you look at the H1 is 1.5, if you do double up that in H2, let’s say, it’s 4.5. So that’s what is our guidance. We continue to believe that one. And in FY ’25, our expectation is to go up to 6 gigawatts to 7 gigawatts,” JP Chalasani, Group CEO of Suzlon said.

During the investors call, the Suzlon touched upon two other issues-higher EPC contracts and role of its 2GW and 3GW wind turbine utility. The management said that its 3MW and 2MW wind turbines proved more economical for the production of wind energy compared to the anticipated performance of 5MW wind turbines.

“For the larger turbines in India today, the cost per kilowatt hour is higher. Okay. On the current site, it all depends upon the wind. The current wind availability, the sites what are available. Today, the 2- megawatt, 3 megawatt would give you a lower cost per kilowatt hour than a 5-megawatt turbine. So therefore, in our opinion, that is not a constraint at all. So what we need to look at is that if that comes into market, our product can give better cost per kilowatt hour than that. And we do feel that our 3 megawatt and 2 megawatt can give lower cost per kilowatt hour compared to a 5- megawatt turbine in the current sites,” Chalasani said.

It is noteworthy that Adani recently got its 5.2 MW of wind turbines empanelled with the MNRE while Suzlon is yet to venture into the advanced bigger turbines.

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Note: The story was updated on Nov 16, 2023, to rectify a factual error in the news report. It was inadvertently mentioned that Suzlon planned to add 7GW wind capacity in FY25.