India may add 6,000 MW wind power capacity in FY’18: IWTMA

India may add around 6,000 megawatts (MW) of wind power capacity in the ongoing fiscal, an industry body has said. “The government’s target (for the 2017-18) I think is 4,500 MW. We know that we have number of challenges in front of us, but we will try our best to give around 6,000 (MW) in the current financial year,” Indian Wind Turbine Manufacturing Association (IWTMA) Chairman Sarvesh Kumar said here. “Like last year, the target was 4,000 MW, but we did 5,500 MW,” Kumar told reporters here. Elaborating on the challenges, he said that “you know that competitive bidding took place for only 1,000 MW. We have requested the Centre to go for at least 4,000 to 5,000 MW of competitive bidding so that we have an absolute clear vision in front of us,” Kumar added.

The leading states in wind power capacity addition during 2016-17 were Andhra Pradesh (2,190 MW), Gujarat (1,275 MW) and Karnataka (882 MW). Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Telangana and Kerala reported 357 MW, 288 MW, 262 MW, 118 MW, 23 MW and 8 MW wind power capacity addition respectively during 2016-17. These figures are tentative, the government had earlier said in a statement. During 2016-17, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) took various policy initiatives in the wind energy sector, including introduction of bidding, re-powering policy, draft wind-solar hybrid policy and new guidelines for development of wind power projects.

Source:PTI