Latest Wind Energy News India Aug'21

Latest Wind Energy News from India:

1. Stagnation of Wind: The wind power industry and experts highlight that the reason for the stagnation is the shift to auction route that seeks the lowest per-unit cost in the wind sector, lack of financial incentives and difficulties in finding land for the projects.
2. Repowering Wind turbines: “Repowering means replacing a high number of smaller, less efficient turbines with a smaller number of bigger, more efficient turbines. This comes with increases in capacity, hub height, rotor diameter, etc.,” Christoph Zipf of Belgium-based Wind Europe. The amount of energy produced increases with an increase in blade length, and hence the rotor diameter. Rotor diameter and hub height have been increasing over the years–the very first wind turbine installed in India had a capacity of 55 kilowatt (KW). The capacity of present day turbines can be more than 3,000 KW (3 MW).
3. The Revised list of models and manufacturers (RLMM) for Wind turbines in India has as many as 9 out of 14 manufacturers that are foreign firms, or have licenses from foreign firms to make in India.
4. Growth in Wind Power in India in 1990s: Commercially viable wind power capacity was the first to be developed on a large scale in the 1990s, mostly in the western and southern states, thanks to the incentive of accelerated depreciation (AD) that the government offered. (AD is an income tax benefit which allows faster depreciation of assets, reducing the tax burden. In the case of renewable energy, AD rate was 100% earlier, and has now been reduced to 40%. This compares favourably with other machinery, which depreciates at a 15% rate.)
5. SECI 1200 MW solar wind hybrid: NTPC Limited, NLC India, Mission Ten Renewable Energy (Ayana Renewable Energy), and Azure Energy emerged as the winners in the Solar Energy Corporation of India’s (SECI) auction for 1,200 MW solar-wind hybrid projects (Tranche-IV) related to the Interstate Transmission System (ISTS). The final winning bid was at Rs 2.34/unit.
6. 800 MW wind tender:  The Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company (MSEDCL) has issued requests for selection (RfS) to procure 500 MW wind power from intrastate wind power projects and 300 MW wind power from grid-connected new inter-state and intrastate wind projects.
7. Offshore Wind: ONGC is eyeing generating electricity from wind at its vast offshore acreage as it looks to augment its renewable energy portfolio, its chairman Subhash Kumar said. Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) has oil and gas fields both in the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal. That experience of operating in shallow and deep-sea is now being tapped to set up wind turbines to generate electricity that could be wired to land.
8. Pending payment to developers: The Andhra Pradesh Electricity Regulatory Commission (APERC) has granted six weeks to a distribution company (DISCOM) in Andhra Pradesh for the payment of a withheld amount of ₹705.4 million (~$9.6 million) to a wind energy generator towards Generation Based Incentive (GBI) and Capacity Utilization Factor (CUF) components.