The Union Minister for Power and New and Renewable Energy announced at a meeting on transmission planning for offshore wind energy projects in India that bids for offshore wind energy blocks of 4 GW would be issued every year for the next three years.
According to the reports, the bids for development off the coasts of Tamil Nadu and Gujarat for the sale of power through open access/captive/bi-lateral third party sale/merchant sale over a period of three years will begin with the current financial year 2022–23. Following that, 5 GW of capacity will be bid out every year for the next five years, up to and including financial year 2029-30. In the next three to four months, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, through its implementing agency, will issue the first bid for leasing out offshore wind energy blocks with a capacity of 4 GW off the coast of Tamil Nadu.
The 8 GW of project capacity that will be auctioned off in the first two years, beginning in financial year 2022–23, will be able to benefit through green attributes such as carbon credits. The first 12 GW of bidding will be conducted using a single stage, two envelope model, in which bidders will be evaluated based on their technological and commercial skills, with only the technically qualified bidders moving on to the financial evaluation. The financial evaluation is based on the quoted lease fee per square km of seabed. The bidder who offers the highest lease charge per sq km of seabed area will be considered the project’s winner.
All offshore wind capacity that will be bid out up to the financial year 2029-30 will receive free evacuation and transmission of power from the offshore pooling substation to onshore transmission.
