Areva Renewables, part of French nuclear giant Areva, plans to tie up with Larsen & Toubro (L&T) and Bharat Forge for supply chain and engineering management, to enter India’s emerging solar energy industry. “We have started discussions with some companies for partnerships and support services for our our technologies and solutions.

L&T and Bharat Forge are preferred partners, since we have alliances with these companies in the nuclear sector,” Anil Srivastava, chief executive officer of Areva Renewables, told Business Standard. In solar, Areva Renewables offers concentrated solar thermal power technology solutions, specialised engineering, procurement and construction of solar thermal power plants and research and development of a range of complementary solar technologies. He said the company had so far signed up with nine project developers in India on solar projects.

Under the recently announced National Solar Mission, India is planning generation capacity of 20 Gw by 2020. By June, the government would allocate about 1,000 Mw for development in the first phase. Areva Renewables is looking at an order book position of $5 billion and a turnover of $1 billion by 2012. Of this, markets like India and China and offshore wind operations in Europe would contribute a major share, said the executive, who took over as senior executive vice-president and CEO of Areva Renewables in January 2009.

Areva's Compact Linear Fresnel Reflector (CLFR) technology, which uses rows of flat reflectors to generate steam from boiler tubes, is most suitable to Indian conditions, since it is less capital-intensive, requires minimum land for installation and uses less water, says Srivastava. He said he would meet officials in New Delhi next week to discuss the potential of the solar steam generator technology developed by Areva, which could be used in existing natural gas-fired and coal-based power plants.

A coal-fired facility with solar power augmentation designed by Areva is operational in Australia. It has also designed a proposed similar facility in Jodhpur. "India has close to 50,000 Mw of coal-based power plants and half of these are located in areas that receive good sunlight. Solar thermal has huge potential in India," said Srivastava.

He said the company was also exploring offshore wind energy possibilities in India's west coast, similar to the German coast. In Germany, Areva is setting up offshore wind energy parks of about 600 Mw capacity. Within the next 18 months, Areva will increase its staff in India from 65 to 300 people. Areva employs about 40 people at its centre of excellence in Chennai. In the past four years, it has installed many biomass power plants of 6-10 Mw. In November 2008, Areva started another Indian subsidiary, Areva India Private Limited, in Mumbai, to act as the centre of corporate operations in India, mainly for activities related to proposed nuclear projects in India.