Promise of cheapest wind power hits snag in India

Bloomberg

India has drawn global attention since it started awarding wind power projects at record-low tariffs, spurring optimism that renewable energy could supplant the nation’s abundant coal resources in electricity generation.
But about half of the more than one gigawatt of capacity awarded in the country’s first auctions in 2017 are incomplete, almost five months after their commissioning deadline, according to J.N. Swain, managing director at state-owned Solar Energy Corp. of India, the agency tasked with implementing the country’s renewable energy targets.
The South Asian nation has awarded some of the world’s lowest green energy tariffs and became the biggest auctioneer of solar and wind capacity last year, according to Bloomberg NEF. But the delays are a check on bringing to reality those rock-bottom power rates achieved via auction, the preferred method by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government to achieve its goal of installing 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022.
SECI has conducted a total of six rounds of wind auctions since 2017, awarding 8.4 gigawatts of capacity. A large chunk of that capacity auctioned over the last year may take longer than expected to get off the ground, just like the first projects, Swain said in an interview in New Delhi last week.