Business

Wind energy: crying for evacuation facilities

COIMBATORE: Thanks to the seas and the mountain passes, Tamil Nadu has in bounty a natural source of energy, the winds. And, it was one of the early birds to tap this resource. With some of the earliest windmills in Tamil Nadu coming up in the 1980s, in just over two decades, the State has 3,684 MW of installed wind energy capacity, which is about 50 per cent of the country’s total installed wind energy capacity.

But, the State struggles to utilise this resource fully, mainly due to inadequate evacuation infrastructure.

This year, the Southern Districts of the State, with about 2,207 MW of wind mill capacity, could generate just about 1,200 MW.

“On the one side we have load shedding, and on the other, we have generation shedding,” rues K. Kasthurirangaian, Vice-President of the Indian Wind Power Association.

Wind energy constituted about 12 per cent of the total energy generated in the State this year. This could have gone up to 17 per cent if the evacuation facilities had been in place, he says. Explaining the problem that has caused some concern to the investors in windmill projects, he says the turnkey cost for windmill installation is now about Rs. 6.5 crore per MW. This included about Rs. 25 lakh per MW paid to the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board towards infrastructure development charges.

The average life of a mill is 20 years and the generation cost worked out to Rs. 4.30 a unit during the first couple of years, and comes down to just Rs. 2.50 a unit (on an average), in the long-run. This is advantageous to those who set up the mills for captive use, as the grid power cost worked out to nearly Rs. 4.10 a unit.

At least 65 per cent of the wind power generation in the State goes for captive use.

Coimbatore, Kanyakumari, Tirunelveli, and Thoothukudi districts are home to most of the windmills.

The cost incurred to create the infrastructure to feed power from the generation point to the nearest sub-station is borne by the investors. The connecting lines from these substations to the load centres stood fully utilised even in 2003. Thus, though there are connecting lines, they are unable to carry the entire load and hence the mills faced grid drop. “The carrying capacity of the conductors is inadequate,” he says. The Tamil Nadu Electricity Board formed a task force in 2006 to expedite the infrastructure creation process. In the Coimbatore District, the infrastructure was upgraded early this year to evacuate about 1,477 MW.

However, the southern districts continued to face the problem and this is expected to worsen as wind mills continue to come up.

Mr. Kasthurirangaian explains that another problem in the southern districts was the distance between the load centres (power consuming point) and generation points. He suggests special incentives to promote industries in nearby areas.

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