Jan 21 2024 11 mins 21
This week on News Flash, Denker Wulf and Energie Engineering Nord are merging, Tata Power partners with the Asian Development Bank for $4.25 billion in clean energy projects, and TPG is considering buying Siemens Gamesa India assets.
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Welcome to Uptime News Flash. Industry news lightning fast. Your hosts, Alan Hall, Joel Saxum, and Phil Totaro discuss the latest deals, mergers, and alliances that will shape the future of wind power. News Flash is brought to you by IntelStor. For market intelligence that generates revenue, visit www.intelstor. com.
Allen Hall: Well, Phil, Tata Power has signed a 4. 25 billion memorandum of understanding with the Asian Development Bank for clean energy projects. And the agreement was signed during the ongoing COP 29 conference in Baku, Azerbaijan. The key initiatives coming out Out of this include a 966 megawatt solar wind hybrid project and a pump hydro storage project.
Now the partnership will support India’s target of 500 gigawatt renewable energy capacity by 2030. This is really important, Phil, because Tata plays a significant role in that. A role in India’s economy.
Philip Totaro: And not just in renewable energy project development and asset ownership and operations.
Obviously they’ve got automotive, they’ve got steel making, they do any number of things. They’re a pretty diversified industrial company. And what actually a lot of people may not know is Tata Power is actually one of the top five asset owners and operators of renewable energy assets in India already.
So getting an additional, MOU signed for, for 4. 25 billion is, is not going to hurt. But keep in mind, they also have broader ambitions outside of India. They, they signed an agreement with a company in Bhutan recently to do a five gigawatt renewable project there. They’ve had ambition in Sri Lanka and, other kind of regional markets within the Asia Pacific region there that it gives them, they’ve been kind of quietly going about, spreading their influence.
And I, again, I think this is a fantastic move for them and, and to be able to get this Asian Development Bank agreement in place, I think is, if they get 100 percent of that, that money that they’re, they’re talking about in this MOU, that, that’s really gonna help push Tata Power forward.
Allen Hall: Well, staying in India, TPG is in advanced talks to acquire the Siemens Gamesa Indian assets.
And that deal could, well, it’s valued at more than 300 million currently. Now, TPG has emerged as a front runner after outbidding industry players and a number of private equity firms. And Phil, this is a valuable asset. I know a number of companies in India were really shooting for this Siemens Gamesa business.
Thank you very much. But TPG has really rocketed to the top.
Philip Totaro: Yeah, and it’s, it’s fascinating because I wouldn’t actually have expected private equity to win this one. Mainly because the, what Siemens is, is really offering in terms of their asset portfolio in, in India is their manufacturing facilities.
Any operations and maintenance agreements that they have and, and that entire side of the business, I would have thought that, They would have either split off that side of the business. Maybe the Chinese were going to come in and take over the factory space. So this is, this is kind of a fascinating thing.
And I’m, I’m curious to actually see what TPG’s strategy is going to be. Cause you’ve already got, obviously Suzlon in the market. You’ve got. Companies like Envision Energy coming into India, you’ve got Inox Wind, you’ve got Cenvion that still has their, their Indian operations and, and has, ambitions of their own.
They want 10 percent market share in that market. So what What is TPG’s strategy here for continuing to develop this technology and, and more importantly, is will this deal include a technology license agreement so they can also manufacture the four or five megawatt plus platform in, in India as well?
Because right now the majority of the turbines at Siemens Gamesa and the designs that they have and the tooling that they have in the manufacturing facilities are four megawatt. for the, the two and a half and three, up to, I think, 3. 4 megawatt, 132 platform. So, to the extent that TPG intends to continue the, this growth path I would be very interested to see what the ultimate scope of this agreement is is gonna be.
Allen Hall: And up in northern Europe, there’s a lot of activity too, as German wind developer Dunkelwolf will eventually acquire. Energy Engineering, NORD the initial acquisition looks like to be about a 25 percent stake and it’s planned for early 2025, and the remaining 75 percent will transfer to Dunker Wolf in 2026, and the company showed those two fill earlier this year.
It is really fascinating because you have an engineering focus group along with a developer and we usually, when you connect those two together, it’s greater than each individual company by themselves. So it’s, there’s a high value to this outcome.
Philip Totaro: Yeah. And it’s very interesting because Germany in particular is, is a market, Austria, you could say the same way.
They’re, they’re markets where they, they have a lot of smaller assets and Dunkerbolth certainly isn’t one of the bigger, asset owners in Germany, although they do have, I want to say it’s like, between 25 and 30 wind farms again, each of varying size, usually only a handful of turbines each.
But, the, the important thing is that for the companies that do own assets in markets like Germany or Austria, if they’re not a big player and have like an internal, development and engineering capability they don’t have an internal asset management and maintenance and operations capability, this is, how you.
Kind of get there is by joining together these different bits and pieces that are going to help, a smaller player like Dunker Wolf actually grow into becoming a more prominent, and frankly, more capable company.
