India’s Ministry of New & Renewable Energy (MNRE) has announced the country’s medium and long-term targets for offshore wind capacity, aiming for 5GW by 2022 and as much as 30GW by 2030.
Following the call for Expressions of Interest (EoI) for the first 1GW of offshore wind which, according to MNRE, evoked keen response from both Indian and global players, the Ministry announced the offshore wind targets as it wanted to give confidence to the wind industry.
The country issued its EoI call for a 1GW commercial offshore wind farm in April 2018 and set a deadline for the submission of EOIs to 25 May, which was later extended until 8 June .
The site for which the EoIs were invited is located some 23 kilometres off Pipavav port at Gulf of Khambhat, off the coast of Gujarat, where the FOWIND Consortium deployed a LiDAR in November 2017.
According to the latest press release from MNRE, a LiDAR gathering offshore wind-relevant data has also been installed in Gulf of Kutch in Gujarat. MNRE left the party that deployed this LiDAR unnamed, only stating it is a “private sector player.”
Plans to install more of such equipment off the states of Tamil Nadu and Gujarat are underway, according to MNRE.
A LiDAR at a site off Tamil Nadu is anticipated to be installed by September 2018.
Areas off the coasts of Gujarat and Tamil Nadu are the two identified areas for the development of offshore wind power in India.
In March 2018, the FOWIND consortium issued feasibility reports for offshore wind development off the two states to provide companies and government institutions with a starting point for future detailed offshore Front End Engineering Design (FEED) studies and assists with the identification of key project risks in the two areas.
To remind, India’s government announced plans for achieving the country’s first 5GW of offshore wind capacity in December 2017, and said it will invite first tenders this year. Following this, the FOWIND Consortium published a report suggesting the best timeline for initiatives was to first add 500MW by 2022, raising this to 2-2.5GW by 2027, and finally reaching 5GW between 2028 and 2032.
The report – From Zero To Five GW: Offshore Wind Outlook for Gujarat and Tamil Nadu (2018-2032) – presented an outlook for the amount of new offshore wind capacity that could be reliably incorporated into the two state’s grids, including the regional transmission and distributions networks, over the three 5-year plan periods, starting in 2018.