The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy published a concept note on the Development of Wind Parks/Wind-Solar Hybrid Park on 13th November seeking public comments. In this context, Prayas (Energy Group)’s (PEG) comments and suggestions on the concept note are attached.

Firstly we strongly endorse the idea to develop wind parks as is a much needed step to accelerate the development of the wind sector in India.

States could nominate state/central agencies as park developers to take on some of the risks of development and accelerate the process. However ideally park developers should be selected through the process of competitive bidding. The note mentions that the GoI will come out with model guidelines for this bidding process. Two of the most important criteria for selection of the park developer should be weighted combination of a) minimum certified CUF (with a high weight) and least cost of park infrastructure development.

To reduce the risks of developing low CUF wind parks, states should ideally invest in setting up 80/100/120 m wind masts on all NIWE identified potential high CUF wind zones. With comprehensive wind resource assessment for 1-2 years, states can proceed with selecting only those zones for park development which have high CUF. States should also bring in other criteria like capacity value of the wind/wind-solar hybrid profile for the procurer’s load profile or ease of transmission access in selecting potential sites for park development.

We also point out a number of issues where further clarification is needed on the risk sharing framework.