Wind-solar is missing the push from the government

<span style="font-weight: bold;">Ashish Mithani, Chief Executive Officer and Whole-time Director, KP Energy</span> believes that if the pace of the bids is well-maintained as publicly promised by the government, then in 2020, there would be a continuous addition of 6 GW to 9 GW of wind projects every year.
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<p> <span style="font-weight: bold;">What is the cause for the fall of new windmill installations and how India can recover it?</span><br />
This addition of about 1.7 GW was not a surprise for the industry looking to no possibilities of commissioning the projects won under bids. And projects for captive, third party, etc. will keep getting trimmed in terms of the overall contribution. However, with the deadlines getting closer for all the SECI bids, the volume will multiply. 2019 may not be giving a very robust number but from 2020 onwards, there would be a continuous addition of 6 GW-9 GW projects every year, if the pace of the bids is well-maintained as publicly promised by the ministry. The availability of more CTU sub-stations in all the windy states and grid integration would ultimately determine the delivery. I can visualise that the Indian wind industry is well- prepared to meet and surpass the 60 GW target comfortably, ahead of 2022.</p>
<p> <span style="font-weight: bold;">What are the challenges in the wind sector and the future hurdles that you foresee?</span> <br />
The bidding mechanism is now getting stabilised. Projects, manufacturing and funding are getting aligned with this government. However, to actually integrate wind in such a complex grid network is a challenge and it must have a geographical spread. Also, I foresee two show stoppers- land availability and project acceptability amongst the neighbourhood. Both of these are getting more and more difficult. For sure, if the country looks at the energy security and sustainable development, it would also have to reduce the differences and welcome the wind turbines as much as skyscrapers and not as demons. Lavish distance guidelines too have to shrink by the regulators to accommodate turbines within a highly populated country. </p>
<p> The current government has canned the Feed-in-Tariff regime in the wind sector to introduce more competition and bring down the prices. Your comment. This has been a very good initiative to indulge all the non-windy states on the mainstream of renewables. It would have actually been a 10-year plan, had the Government of India been dependent only on the windy states to implement auctions and add 28 GW. Getting power on auctions has brought transparency, capital size investment visibility for large FIIs, economies to scale, higher PLF, higher efficiency and competitive costs. </p>
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