The ‘India renewable energy story’ continues to sweeten as more and more companies are looking to aggressively invest into and expand renewable energy capacity across the country. The latest announcement comes from Bharat Light and Power, a fast-growing wind energy project developer.
The company plans to invest $1 billion to expand its renewable energy capacity portfolio from 200 MW to 1,000 MW over the next five years. The company is looking to raise this capital from investors with whom the management is currently in contact. Companies including UTI Capital and California-based venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson currently own stake in the three-year old company.
Bharat Light and Power came into the spotlight when it acquired 150 MW of wind energy assets owned by DLF, a housing and infrastructure company in India, for about $47 million in early 2013. Now the company is planning to set up its own wind energy projects in several states across the country.
Bharat Light and Power also entered into a deal with IBM last year to utilize the latter’s cloud computing resources to monitor wind turbines in remote areas of the country. The technology provided by IBM would allow BLP to monitor local wind conditions, operations of wind turbines and proactively take appropriate measures to optimise and increase power generation.
Interest in the Indian wind energy sector has been rekindled since the reintroduction of the generation-based incentive or GBI which gives the projects developers a fixed price for every unit of electricity generated over-and-above the preferential tariff they already enjoy. Wind is already the leading renewable energy technology in India, accounting for about two-thirds of the country’s total renewable energy capacity. Preferential tariffs on offer to the developers have also been rising steadily over the last few years.
A private equity fund run by Goldman Sachs has so far invested $335 million in another renewable energy start-up ReNew Power Limited. The company, which is looking to expand business into solar energy as well, aims to have an installed capacity of 1,000 MW by 2015.
Read more at http://cleantechnica.com/2014/04/08/bharat-light-power-will-invest-1-billion-boost-renewable-energy-capacity-india/#o7zHdtuuQEEuwtfs.99
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