The government’s ambitious target of adding 60,000 MW of wind capacity by 2022 seems difficult considering the current rate of progress in the sector, India Ratings said.According to a survey by the ratings agency, capacity additions will remain healthy, but it is likely that these will fall short of achieving the target of 60,000 MW by 2022 from 24,000 MW today.The ratings agency expects nearly 60 per cent of the 2017 target of 10,000 MW (assuming an average requirement of 5,000 MW per annum) to be achieved.
It noted that nearly two-thirds of the incremental capacity additions till 2017 is likely to come up in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Karnataka.However, these states also have limited margin of error on plant load factors (PLFs) and will attract only serious and well-established independent power producers (IPPs), it said.
According to the study, the cumulative capacity additions in the prominent states of Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan and Maharashtra have slowed down significantly, as evident from their CAGR of 9 per cent between 2012-2015 as against 19 per cent between 2009-2012.
“This trend is likely to continue with each of these states grappling with saturation and/or state specific policies and evacuation issues.”However, we believe capacity additions in these prominent states could still emanate from re-powering of existing wind assets by increasing the turbine height to 80-120 metres from 50 metres,” it said.
Source: PTI
