The government of India said it will offer 4GW of capacity on blocks offshore Tamil Nadu within the next three to four months.
The government will first accept bids for project capacity of 4GW per year offshore Tamil Nadu and Gujarat, over a three-year term starting FY23, according to a statement by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy yesterday.
Annual bidding is invited “for sale of power through open access/captive/bi-lateral third party sale/merchant sale”, said the statement, after which a project capacity of 5GW will be bid out every year for a period of five years.
Despite having a policy for offshore wind in place for seven years, not a single project has been sanctioned in India to date.
Significantly, India remains an unexplored and highly attractive market for offshore wind given its large coastline of 7,600 kms.
Moreover, the government’s ambition to install 30 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030 to meet surging demand for power underscores the potential market size.
However, India has been slow to develop the sector, even though it had set an offshore wind target of 5 GW by 2022. While India has a well-developed onshore wind sector, there are no operational offshore wind farms in its waters.
Earlier this year, Germany’s RWE and India’s Tata Power announced they were teaming up to explore the potential development of offshore wind projects in India.
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