India Wind Power Update

After Reliance's proposed 150 MW wind farm in Maharashtra, now the Tata's are building a 100 MW wind power plant. The Tata plant will be financed by the Asia Development Bank which is promoting wind power in India. Reliance Energy and Tata Power are the biggest private electricity suppliers in Maharashtra (mainly Mumbai).

Meanwhile Suzlon who is building the wind farm for Reliance has just signed its single biggest contract to supply wind turbine capacity. The contract is to supply 400MW of turbine capacity to PPM Energy of Portland, Oregon, USA.

In Suzlon's high-profile battle for German wind turbine maker REpower, Areva has not yet topped Suzlon's latest bid. Suzlon is now fairly confident of getting 40% of REpower from the market, which along with the 25% owned by its bidding partner Martifier should take the total stake above51%.

India is trying to encourage inter-state trading in clean energy by industry. "India is contemplating a system of trading green certificates to enable industries located in one state to tap the renewable energy potential of other states", according to a senior government official speaking at an interactive session between Indian and US energy experts organized by CII in Chennai.

Delhi is making moves in this direction already. In its plans to have a Green Games, it wants to buy wind power from Rajasthan which is a regional superpower of sorts in wind power. Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra lead the nation in wind power capacity, but they are too far away from Delhi.