The government estimates that over 100 GW of renewable energy projects will be under various stages of implementation before the current financial year ends.

Speaking at the launch of the Thirty Second Edition of the TERI Energy and Environment Data Diary and Yearbook (TEDDY 2016-17), Secretary, Ministry of New And Renewable Energy, Anand Kumar, said, “We have closed financial year 2017-2018 with 68 GW of installed renewable power generation capacity. The government will bid out 10 GW wind power projects, 30 GW solar power projects in 2018-19.”

“The government has already bid out 12.5 GW of wind power projects, 20 GW solar power projects in financial year 2017-2018. These are going to be completed within 13 months from the date of being bid out,” he added. Effectively, the government expects to have over 100 GW of renewable energy projects under various stages of implementation before 2018-19 ends. Another 6000 MW of wind energy projects would have had been added to this list if the feed-in-tariff model was continued for them, according to Kumar.

Kumar said in addition to bidding out projects, the next focus is on developing solar-wind hybrid projects and off-shore wind energy projects.

He said, “We will be coming up with a policy for solar-wind hybrid projects soon. They make sense as the evacuation infrastructure is already in place. The first bids for setting up off-shore wind projects in Tuticorin will come this calendar year. We expect to have 10 GW of installed off-shore wind power generation by 2022.”

In addition to bidding out large projects, the government had also been focusing on smaller projects such as roof-top solar. Kumar said, “The roof-top solar targets have not been met and we will be bringing the feed-in-tariff model to appropriately incentivise these projects.”