India's Torrent Power gears for renewables expansion in coming years

Indian power producer Torrent Power will seek to expand its renewable energy portfolio by acquiring new projects and explore new opportunities in the transmission and distribution sectors in the next few years.

The Ahmedabad, Gujarat-based company currently has 4.1 GW of power generation capacity, of which 2.7 GW is gas-based thermal, while roughly 1 GW comes from wind and solar photovoltaic (PV) parks, its latest annual financial report showed on Friday. In addition to the 213 MW of solar and 805 MW of wind farms in operation, Torrent Power also has 565 MW of renewable energy projects in the pipeline.

In the fiscal year through March 2022, the Indian firm carried out several acquisitions of renewable power plants that added 231 MW of capacity to its portfolio.

According to the company’s chairman Samir Mehta, the need for using clean sources of power in India is exacerbating, as is the need for enhanced efforts in the direction of sustainability. He pointed out that the recent coal shortage and the war in Ukraine had detrimental effects on the domestic power sector, while those effects had reinstated the need for a swift transition to cleaner fuels.

“We aim to increase our renewable portfolio through new bids or acquisitions in the coming years [..],” Mehta said. His plan also envisages pursuing expansion in distribution and transmission through the privatisation or franchising of distribution areas.

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