India to power ahead as wind blows Suzlon’s way

Free as the wind, goes the saying. Harnessing wind power allows it to blow as freely, but in a power-starved country, it could be just the answer blowin’ in the wind. “Every day, the country loses 45,000 MW of power,” according to Tulsi Tanti, chairman and managing director, Suzlon Energy referring to the country’s unharnessed potential for wind energy. Mr Tanti can be pardoned for having wind and windmills on his mind, since Suzlon Energy, the company he set up in 1995, is now the sixth largest fully-integrated wind energy player globally. Taking over assets, physical or people, in Europe, is something he is familiar with, having done it from the early days of Suzlon Energy. To begin at the beginning, Mr Tanti’s brush with wind energy, came from the time he ran a textile mill in Ahmedabad. “Power constitutes 20-25% of the cost of production for the textile industry. These costs, rise every month, making the textile industry unviable. So, we decided to install a wind turbine and imported our first turbine from Sudwind, Germany,” Mr Tanti narrated. While the first windmill was for the captive consumption of the textile mill, it lead to Mr Tanti exiting the textile business, to concentrate on wind power. Not having entered his father’s construction, and cold storage businesses, there was no question of exiting those.