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India gauges auctions for wind power to maximize investment

India’s preparing to tender 10 gigawatts of wind power by 2019 in auctions intended to help meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitious clean-energy targets.The first 1GW tender is planned for October, Varsha Joshi said in an interview with Bloomberg News. She’s joint secretary at India’s ministry of new and renewable Power, the agency tasked with realizing Modi’s goal of increasing clean energy almost fourfold by 2022, to 175GW from 45GW now.

India will encourage bids by increasing the quota for clean energy that utilities are required to purchase, according to Joshi. The government is working to raise the share of green power from all the states’ grids over the next three years.“We’re still chalking out a road map for wind auctions in order to enable states to fulfil the upcoming new purchase obligations and are thinking of around 10 gigawatt capacity to be tendered by 2019,” Joshi said.

The quota, requiring states to source a percentage of energy consumption with clean sources, is called the Renewable Purchase Obligation, or RPO. It may be increased to 17% by 2019, up from 5% to 7% currently, according of the joint secretaries at the ministry, Tarun Kapoor.