Centre to auction offshore wind energy projects

The Centre is planning to auction 5 gigawatt (GW) offshore wind power projects next year, Union Minister for Power and Renewable Energy R K Singh said on Thursday.

"Our target is that we would auction at least 5 GW of offshore wind capacities next year. Survey is in progress at a location. We would start survey at two more locations and placed an order to buy equipment for that," he said addressing the National Energy Conservation Day function here.

The minister also expressed confidence that India will surpass its target of having 175 GW renewable energy capacity by 2022, taking it to 200 GW.

On wind energy, he said 9 GW will be auctioned in this fiscal, which also includes already auctioned capacities. The next two fiscals will see bidding of 10 GW each. At present, wind power installed capacity is 32 GW.

On solar capacities' auction, the minister said the government would auction 20 GW projects, including those already auctioned this year. Next year (2018-19), the government will auction 30GW and another 30GW in subsequent year.

The minister said India's installed power generation capacity would be 1,000 GW eventually.

At present, India's total installed power generation capacity is 330 GW which includes 60 GW from renewable.