MNRE release draft offshore wind tender documents

On 14th November 2022, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) released India’s first ever draft tender document for offshore wind. The draft tender document are circulated for stakeholder consultation with a view to receive comments by 28^th November 2022. Based on this, a tender process will be undertak-en to select developers for leasing of seabed areas equivalent to 4 GW of offshore wind power projects off the coast of Tamil Nadu.

Yesterday, MNRE released the draft tender document for seabed leasing for offshore wind energy off the coast of Tamil Nadu. The draft tender document includes contractual agreements for seabed leasing for carrying out studies/surveys and subsequent development of offshore wind projects under Open Access/Captive/Third Party Sale. Stakeholders should send feedback and comments to MNRE by 28th November 2022.

The scope of the request for selection is:

• Selection of offshore wind power developers (OWPD) for leasing of seabed areas equivalent to 4000 MW of offshore wind power projects off the coast of Tamil Nadu, India through international competitive bidding
• Grid Connectivity and Long-Term Open Access / Access to grid under general network access (GNA) framework) to grid shall be in the scope of the offshore wind power developer (OWPD).
• The energy generated from offshore wind power projects to be consumed in captive mode or sold to third party under open access framework or sold through merchant sale/power exchange.
  

The draft tender document specifies the areas that are currently envisioned to be leased under the “model-3” that was presented in the Strategy Paper for Establishment of Offshore Wind Energy Projects, released in July 2022 by MNRE.

The seabed areas put forward for leasing have a proposed total installation capacity of 4,000 MW. However, the actual MW capacity to be installed by the developer in the allocated block shall be determined at the stage of Survey Lease Deed agreement, and after detailed surveys are carried out by the developer and at the time of preparing the detailed project report (DPR).

The full draft tender document can be found here.