GE Revives Indian Wind Business as Subsidies Improve

From Bloomberg:

General Electric Co., the biggest maker of power-generation equipment, is reviving its Indian wind-turbine business after a four-year absence because the government has improved incentives.

Fairfield, Connecticut-based GE said this month it will build wind turbines in south India with an annual capacity to produce 300 machines of 1.5 megawatts each. Customers have been lined up to buy some of these, Steve Bolze, president and chief executive of GE’s Power & Water business, said in an interview.

The Indian government has changed its subsidy program to favor wind-energy generation rather than investment in turbines, aiming to speed development of electricity from clean energy.

“As you shift more to generation-based, customers have greater incentive to produce power or to expand the number of wind turbines on a given farm,” Bolze said last week in New Delhi.

The move for GE is a way to reduce its dependence on the U.S. market, said Keith Hays, director of research at Emerging Energy Research in Barcelona, Spain.

“The U.S. wind market grew very quickly over the past couple of years but as the financial crisis set in, GE was particularly exposed to that regional dependence,” he said. “There’s been a steady shift over the last six to nine months of GE looking more and more at international markets.”>>>MORE