Indian wind firm plans expansion

• 10 years ago (2014-04-07)
• Junior Isles

North America 1021 Renewables 776

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Indian renewables firm Bharat Light and Power Pvt Ltd. (BLP) is aiming to more than quadruple its current 200 MW generation capacity to 1 GW in the next five years, according to its founder, president and CEO Tejpreet Singh Chopra.

It plans to reach this ambitious target by raising $1 billion in capital “through a variety of investors, banks and internal funds”, says Chopra.

“To scale up, we are doing two things – raising capital and building power plants. We have projects being developed across the country,” said Chopra.

Chopra revealed that BLP is currently speaking with “large global players who invest in the renewable energy projects”. Current investors in the 3-year old company already include UTI Capital and California-based venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

BLP currently has three wind power plants running in the Indian states of Maharashtra and Gujarat, with a total installed capacity of 200 MW. It is currently developing wind farms at other locations and states across India including Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh.

BLP recently partnered with US tech giant IBM in order to use the company’s cloud capabilities, analytics and mobility products to help its power generation capacity at its distributed sites.

Chopra hopes that this expertise and ‘big data’ will allow BLP to move into managing the wind farms of global companies and use data analytics to predict wind patterns to give their customers a generation edge.

“At present, we are talking to three or four parties and hope to get our first third party customer in the next couple of quarters,” Chopra stated.

“If IT solutions and emerging technologies such as data analytics can be deployed successfully, that can emerge as new a new business model for wind energy companies,” commented V.Subramanian, chief executive and secretary general at industry lobby Indian Wind Energy Association.