“One of India’s major advantages today and going forward is that its RE potential is vast and largely untapped,” says Kailash Lal Tarachandani, CEO, Inox Wind Ltd
 Major roadblocks According to Kailash Lal Tarachandani, CEO of Inox Wind, “The year FY 15 was a good year for Indian power sector where power generation grew by 8.4 per cent year-on-year and the peak deficit was down to 3.5 per cent in FY15 from 4.5 per cent FY14.”
However, he has listed some of the challenges as: Under performance: India has historically failed to meet its power sector targets by a significant margin and with tremendous opportunities ahead, the power sector continues to be affected by the shortfall both on generation as well as transmission side.
Fuel availability: While additional gas supply from KG basin has eased shortage to a limited extend, supply constraints for domestic coal remain and are expected to continue going forward.
Problems of coal blocks: The failure to achieve the planned target from the captive coal blocks presents itself as a major challenge to the electricity sector. Coal is the mainstay of the power production in India and is expected to remain so in the future.
Equipment shortage: Equipment shortages have been a significant reason for India missing its capacity addition targets. While the shortage has been primarily in the core components of boilers, turbines and generators, there has been lack of adequate supply of Balance of Plant (BOP) equipment as well.Land acquisition and environment clearance: Land acquisition poses an increasingly significant challenge in the Indian electricity sector. Power plants and utilities face major constraints and delays regarding the availability of land and obtaining the requisite environment and other clearances for the projects.
Financial problem: Rapid builds up of the generation capacity is being aided by setting up of Ultra Mega Power Projects (UMPPs) each of which is 4000 MW. However, the execution of the UMPP is a significant challenge as India has not witnessed an execution of such a large scale power project before.
Schedule dependency on transmission lines: Significant enhancement in construction activity is likely to be required to meet the 12th Plan target of additional transmission capacity.
Realise RE potentialFor decades, as demand for power has grown, India has added large-scale conventional power resources. With the limitations of conventional power and challenges and issues cropping up, the solar and wind power and other renewable electricity (RE) resources becoming commercially available in the marketplace, there are additional choices available to policymakers and stakeholders concerned with the technical, economic, and environmental characteristics of a future power system that keeps pace with economic growth. Tarachandani adds that, one of India’s major advantages today and going forward is that its RE potential is vast and largely untapped. Recent estimates indicate that India’s solar potential is greater than 10,000 GW and its wind potential could be higher than 2,000 GW.
On this note, Tarachandani, suggests, “To fully take advantage of India’s RE potential over the next few years, however, will require new initiatives from central and state governments — beyond policy and programs currently in place — to support the engagement, participation, and new behaviours of power sector stakeholders including RE industry and developers, grid operators, public and private finance, consumers, and others.”
Short term measures suggested Tarachandani suggests some of the short term measures which are required to be taken immediately to revamp the sector are:  Improve health of discoms.  Payment delays should be avoided for faster pace.  Consistent policy across states.  Strengthening of transmission – inter and intra state  RPO compliance and enforcement should be strict.   ROW issues and land clearances to be taken care of on immediate basis. High utilisation factor targets and discom strength.  Proper resource planning framework at the discom level.
Long term measures to ensure sustainabilityKeeping in mind the target of 175 GW of power by 2022 set by government of India, Tarachandani recommends some measures need to be taken like: Enforcement of Renewable Purchase Obligations to all stakeholders. Forecasting and scheduling of transmission of power. Hybrid power generation from solar and wind both. Grid connection: Smarter grid is the need of the hour. Wind resource assessment: Updating or expansions of existing data base. Regular interaction with all stakeholders to periodically address policy, regulatory, evacuation and transmission matters of wind power. Regular interaction with states to periodically address land acquisition, E&F and state policy issues. Repowering of existing wind turbines. Offshore resource assessment.
Focusing on core areas What differentiates us from other players in the market or what makes us who we are, is that we have actually focussed on three or four aspects of this business, claims Tarachandani.
He mentions, “When people talk of wind energy, it is actually three or four things, which come together to make a company successful from the wind perspective keeping India in mind. One, you need to have a strong pipeline of projects because the way the Indian market works for IPPs or utilities simply come to turbine manufacturers and expect us to do the entire turnkey piece, which means land acquisition, supplying turbines, erecting them, commissioning those turbines and then doing O&M for the next 20 years. So, we are focussed on all these four pillars. We created a huge pipeline of our inventory of project heights and we have been doing this for the past four or five years.”
In addition he adds, “The second most important thing we were focussed on is getting the most suitable technology – the technology which is ideally suited for Indian climatic conditions and not just a turbine or technology, which is suited for global climates and simply dumping it in the Indian market. After this, we mastered the manufacturing capability. What is also important within that is we are focussed on the right mix of make versus buy so we are focussed on manufacturing the high value-added components; the components where technology is involved.”

“One of India’s major advantages today and going forward is that its RE potential is vast and largely untapped,” says Kailash Lal Tarachandani, CEO, Inox Wind Ltd
 Major roadblocks According to Kailash Lal Tarachandani, CEO of Inox Wind, “The year FY 15 was a good year for Indian power sector where power generation grew by 8.4 per cent year-on-year and the peak deficit was down to 3.5 per cent in FY15 from 4.5 per cent FY14.”
However, he has listed some of the challenges as: Under performance: India has historically failed to meet its power sector targets by a significant margin and with tremendous opportunities ahead, the power sector continues to be affected by the shortfall both on generation as well as transmission side.
Fuel availability: While additional gas supply from KG basin has eased shortage to a limited extend, supply constraints for domestic coal remain and are expected to continue going forward.
Problems of coal blocks: The failure to achieve the planned target from the captive coal blocks presents itself as a major challenge to the electricity sector. Coal is the mainstay of the power production in India and is expected to remain so in the future.
Equipment shortage: Equipment shortages have been a significant reason for India missing its capacity addition targets. While the shortage has been primarily in the core components of boilers, turbines and generators, there has been lack of adequate supply of Balance of Plant (BOP) equipment as well.Land acquisition and environment clearance: Land acquisition poses an increasingly significant challenge in the Indian electricity sector. Power plants and utilities face major constraints and delays regarding the availability of land and obtaining the requisite environment and other clearances for the projects.
Financial problem: Rapid builds up of the generation capacity is being aided by setting up of Ultra Mega Power Projects (UMPPs) each of which is 4000 MW. However, the execution of the UMPP is a significant challenge as India has not witnessed an execution of such a large scale power project before.
Schedule dependency on transmission lines: Significant enhancement in construction activity is likely to be required to meet the 12th Plan target of additional transmission capacity.
Realise RE potentialFor decades, as demand for power has grown, India has added large-scale conventional power resources. With the limitations of conventional power and challenges and issues cropping up, the solar and wind power and other renewable electricity (RE) resources becoming commercially available in the marketplace, there are additional choices available to policymakers and stakeholders concerned with the technical, economic, and environmental characteristics of a future power system that keeps pace with economic growth. Tarachandani adds that, one of India’s major advantages today and going forward is that its RE potential is vast and largely untapped. Recent estimates indicate that India’s solar potential is greater than 10,000 GW and its wind potential could be higher than 2,000 GW.
On this note, Tarachandani, suggests, “To fully take advantage of India’s RE potential over the next few years, however, will require new initiatives from central and state governments — beyond policy and programs currently in place — to support the engagement, participation, and new behaviours of power sector stakeholders including RE industry and developers, grid operators, public and private finance, consumers, and others.”
Short term measures suggested Tarachandani suggests some of the short term measures which are required to be taken immediately to revamp the sector are:  Improve health of discoms.  Payment delays should be avoided for faster pace.  Consistent policy across states.  Strengthening of transmission – inter and intra state  RPO compliance and enforcement should be strict.   ROW issues and land clearances to be taken care of on immediate basis. High utilisation factor targets and discom strength.  Proper resource planning framework at the discom level.
Long term measures to ensure sustainabilityKeeping in mind the target of 175 GW of power by 2022 set by government of India, Tarachandani recommends some measures need to be taken like: Enforcement of Renewable Purchase Obligations to all stakeholders. Forecasting and scheduling of transmission of power. Hybrid power generation from solar and wind both. Grid connection: Smarter grid is the need of the hour. Wind resource assessment: Updating or expansions of existing data base. Regular interaction with all stakeholders to periodically address policy, regulatory, evacuation and transmission matters of wind power. Regular interaction with states to periodically address land acquisition, E&F and state policy issues. Repowering of existing wind turbines. Offshore resource assessment.
Focusing on core areas What differentiates us from other players in the market or what makes us who we are, is that we have actually focussed on three or four aspects of this business, claims Tarachandani.
He mentions, “When people talk of wind energy, it is actually three or four things, which come together to make a company successful from the wind perspective keeping India in mind. One, you need to have a strong pipeline of projects because the way the Indian market works for IPPs or utilities simply come to turbine manufacturers and expect us to do the entire turnkey piece, which means land acquisition, supplying turbines, erecting them, commissioning those turbines and then doing O&M for the next 20 years. So, we are focussed on all these four pillars. We created a huge pipeline of our inventory of project heights and we have been doing this for the past four or five years.”
In addition he adds, “The second most important thing we were focussed on is getting the most suitable technology – the technology which is ideally suited for Indian climatic conditions and not just a turbine or technology, which is suited for global climates and simply dumping it in the Indian market. After this, we mastered the manufacturing capability. What is also important within that is we are focussed on the right mix of make versus buy so we are focussed on manufacturing the high value-added components; the components where technology is involved.”