Industry body Indian Wind Turbine Manufacturers Association (IWTMA) today said the wind power generation capacity in the country has crossed 32 GW mark. However, according to the Central Electricity Authority’s (CEA) monthly report for March 2017, the installed wind power generation capacity is around 28.7 GW, lower than the ITWMA estimates. India’s installed wind power generation capacity has crossed 32 GW so far and there should be at least 6 GW of capacity addition every year to meet the target of having 60 GW by 2022, IWTMA Chairman Sarvesh Kumar said on the sidelines of Windergy India 2017 conference here. Elaborating further, he said the latest data indicate that country’s wind power generation capacity is over 32 GW after addition of 5.4 GW in last fiscal.
On the veracity of the data, he replied that the latest estimates indicate that country has the installed wind power generation capacity of 32 GW. About the expected capacity addition this fiscal, he said,”We are going to do 6 GW in 2017-18. It is based on certain fundamental as the government alone will auction 4 GW of capacities during this fiscal”. “Apart from government auctions, there would be addition of wind power capacities by the industry and institutions,” he added. The government has decided to go through the bidding route as the first ever auction of wind power projects in February 2017, where power tariffs dropped to all-time low of Rs 3.46 per unit. Wind power capacity of 1 GW was auctioned by the Solar Energy Corporation of India in February.
Globally, India is at the fourth position after China, the US and Germany, in terms of wind capacity installation. Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) in its Global Wind Report presented a strong outlook for wind power across the globe in 2017. “India set a new record in 2016, and 2017 is likely to be another strong year, but after that things will probably slow a bit as the industry and markets adapt to tendering system which is now being introduced and then pick up again,” GWEC had said in its 2016 report. It said, “Overall, we expect that Asian market to add 154 GW in next five years, for a total of 357 GW by the end of 2021”. The council has projected 8.8 per cent growth in wind power installations to 546.1 GW in 2017 from 486.8 GW in 2016 across the globe.
Source:PTI
