India’s offshore wind power capacity to match China’s by ’30
India’s offshore wind power generation capacity is seen climbing to 30 Gw by 2030, on a par with China’s, and accounting for 30 per cent of the envisaged capacity of 100 Gw in Asian economies. According to the estimates of the Institute for Energy Economics & Financial Analysis (IEEFA), both China and India will ride the offshore wind power wave. The balance capacities will be contributed by South Korea (18 Gw), Japan (10 Gw), Taiwan (5.5 Gw) and the remaining 6.5 Gw jointly by Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam.
India has set an offshore wind power capacity target of 5 Gw by 2022 and 30 Gw by 2030. In April, the Ministry of New & Renewable Energy (MNRE) had invited Expressions of Interest to develop 1 Gw offshore wind project on the western coast. A total of 34 companies responded, including established domestic players like Sterlite Power Grid, Inox Wind, Suzlon Energy and Mytrah Energy. The bids also attracted foreign participants such as Orsted, Alfanar, Deep Water Structures, EON Climate & Renewable, Terraform Global, Macquarie Group, Shell and Senvion.
Offshore wind development has the potential to reach the same cost efficiencies as onshore, with prices pushed downward by the upward movement in offshore turbine generation capacity.
“Successful commercialisation of floating offshore wind will also drive the sector’s development in Asia. Having said that, reaching the region’s 100 Gw target by 2030 will be a mammoth undertaking. The sector is still in an embryonic state in Asia. Developers should carefully explore opportunities by doing small projects given it is a difficult task to install wind turbines offshore. Performance-related uncertainties will only disappear as more wind installation data is accumulated,” Tim Buckley, director of energy finance studies (Australasia) and Kashish Shah, research associate at IEEFA, observed in the report.
Citing examples from Europe, the report points out that offshore wind power facilities can achieve capacity utilisation rates of 55 per cent. If the Asian countries noted above can install 70 per cent of the 100 Gw target, this could replace about 300-350 million tonnes of coal annually.
To date, the growth in offshore wind power has been concentrated in Europe, with 84 per cent of the total 18.8 Gw of global offshore wind capacity installed in Northern Europe.
A record 4.3 Gw of offshore wind power capacity was installed across nine markets in 2017. IEEFA, however, believes Asian countries such as China, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam are set to capitalise on Europe's lead in the coming decade.