Back in the noughties, Suzlon fulfilled some remarkable orders of several hundred megawatts, especially on the US market. Since then, orders of that magnitude have generally become more frequent in the wind industry, but specifically more unusual for the Indian turbine manufacturer, which has been lagging behind for a number of years.

Over the past year, however, the pendulum has begun to swing back in the right direction. A steady stream of order announcements have been flowing out of the head office in Pune, and on Tuesday, it was revealed that ABC Cleantech, a project company under Brookfield and Axis Energy’s joint venture Evren, had placed an order for no less than 214 turbines with a total capacity of 642 MW.

”It is a delight to start the year with a significant order announcement from Evren ,” says Vice Chairman Girish Tanti in a press release, adding:

”Suzlon is committed to partnering with Evren to enhance their green energy portfolios while helping advance India’s renewable energy goals.”

The partnership with the project developer is a new one, which is not a big surprise, given that Evren was only established as a joint venture last fall. 

However, Brookfield and Axis have been running ABC Renewables since 2019, through which over 1.8 GW of solar and wind has been developed. The new joint venture builds on Axis’ Indian portfolio with a capital injection of 845 million dollars from Brookfield’s Global Transition Fund II.

The fact that Canadian capital is financing the park also indicates a shift in the Indian market. Whereas in the past, Indian owners were generally the main buyers of Western turbines from Siemens Gamesa and Vestas, the picture is much more varied now. However, a clear trend away from Western turbine manufacturers is emerging. 

An example of this was seen two weeks ago when CIP made the decision to back Chinese manufacturer Envision’s, 300 MW Indian wind farm. Furthermore, at the end of December, Suzlon announced an order from a ”leading Nordic energy company”, which is as yet unnamed.

(Translated using DeepL with additional editing by Catherine Brett)