India Seeks Gujarat Geotechnical Investigator

India’s National Institute of Wind Energy (NIWE) has issued a tender for geotechnical investigation in the Gulf of Khambhat off the coast of Gujarat.

The contractor will be in charge of drilling three boreholes in a 400km2 area around the location of the country’s first offshore LiDAR, installed last year, as well as making two boreholes at two proposed LiDAR locations.

All the activities will take place in water depths of up to 30m in soil and 10m in rock, whichever found first. The exact locations of boreholes will be finalized based on the geophysical investigation.

The awarded company will also be in charge of carrying out soil investigation at the sites in order to learn the nature and properties of soil at recommended depths for the design of offshore wind foundations.

The duration of site investigations, laboratory tests and report preparation is 90 days, starting from the date of the contract and excluding the time NIWE needs for commenting on the draft report.

NIWE recently issued a list of 35 companies interested in developing a 1GW offshore wind project off Gujarat, for which India invited expressions of interest this April.

The list includes Ørsted, Van Oord, Equinor, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, and innogy among others, while a number of companies teamed up with turbine manufacturers, such as Senvion, Siemens Gamesa and MHI Vestas, to submit their bids for the project.