India publishes bidding guidelines for 1-GW wind scheme

India's Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) on Thursday issued bidding guidelines for the 1-GW wind tender plans for which were announced in June.

The scheme targets 1 GW of wind power plants connected to the inter-state transmission system (ISTS). The ministry said that capacity could go above 1 GW if there is demand from buying entities -- distribution companies in non-windy state as well as bulk consumers in any location who want to purchase at least 10 MW under the scheme. One objective of the auction is to help non-windy states meet their non-solar renewable purchase obligation (RPO) requirements.

The winning projects will be selected through competitive bidding followed by e-reverse auction. They will sign 25-year power purchase agreements (PPAs) at the bid tariff, while the buying entities will sign contracts at a pooled price of the total bids selected. Solar Energy Corp of India (SECI) runs the scheme and has already issued a request for service (RfS) document.

Bidders can compete for at least 50 MW of capacity and up to 250 MW.

The guidelines are available at http://mnre.gov.in/file-manager/grid-wind/Scheme-for-Setting-up-of-1000-MW-ISTS-connected-Wind-Power-Projects.pdf.

The government of India aims to boost its installed renewable energy capacity to 175 GW by 2022 , 60 GW of which will come from wind. Currently, the country has about 28.1 GW of wind farms, accounting for around 9% of its total installed capacity.

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