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Suzlon which is India’s largest wind turbine manufacturer entered the solar space last year. The company is using its expertise in wind farm development to get into the development of solar farms. It has built huge expertise over the years in EPC and the power markets. It has good relationships with regulators and power utilities which allows it to have an edge in the development of large solar power plants which require similar capabilities. Suzlon has taken a different track than the other large EPC companies such as LT and Mahindra. Instead of doing plain vanilla construction, the company bids and wins over solar farm contracts.
After it does the initial ground work in terms of construction, the firm sells off the equity in the farms to large solar developers such as CLP, Organe Power and Ostro Energy. The solar developers benefit as they have to take much lower risk in terms of bidding and initial construction. They also get a good quality solar asset as Suzlon is one of the top EPC firms.
Suzlon also has a win at its hand as it does not have to lock capital in solar farms for too long and it can churn capital rapidly to construct new solar farms. Suzlon has a vision of becoming one of the largest renewable energy firms in the world and getting into solar energy is imperative as the wind energy market in India has matured with growth rates tapering off. It is important for all large wind companies to have a solar strategy in place as the growth in solar energy is expected to be exponential
Gamesa which is the largest shipper of wind turbines in India has already become a top EPC company in solar energy and is also manufacturing large volumes of high quality 1500 V solar inverters. Inox has not entered the solar energy in a big way, but is making plans to do so as well. Most of the large wind developers in the country such as Mytrah, Renew Power, Hero and others have already become large solar developers after winning huge capacities in recent state and national solar reverse auction tenders.