CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu Electricity Generation and Distribution Corporation (Tangedco) has created a record in selling wind power to other states for 2017. The power utility has so far sold 11.938 million units to various states and has also earned a few crores of rupees from the sale.
Apart from selling wind power to other states, Tamil Nadu has also evacuated the maximum amount of renewable energy from wind this year. On an average, nearly 3500MW to 4000MW of wind power was used by the discom to distribute power.
“The average cost at which wind power was sold to other states was Rs 5.16 per unit. Since wind power was sold through the electricity exchange, Tangedco does not know which states purchased it in the exchange,” a senior official told TOI. The exchange does not share information about states selling and purchasing power in the electricity exchange.
“Tangedco has earned Rs 6.17 crore through sale of wind power to the exchange and the discom purchases wind power at a cost ranging from Rs 3 a unit to Rs 4.15 a unit,” said the official.
Wind power is generally available from evening to early morning. “Tangedco sold wind power on 14 days in August during peak hours in the evening. On an average, wind power was sold for two to four hours per day and it works out to around 500MW per day,” he said.
According to Electricity Act 2003, each state has to meet a percentage of power generated there annually through renewable power like wind and solar. “After the TN government scrapped section 11 of the Electricity Act, we can sell power to other states. Many states which have not met the RPO (Renewable Purchase Obligation) so far have approached us,” he said. “Wind power generators under the banner of the Indian Wind Power Association (IWPA) voluntarily collected money to ask the National Institute of Wind Energy (NIWE) to do the forecasting on behalf of all the wind power generators in TN. It has helped the discom to evacuate wind energy,” Indian Wind Power Association chairman K Kasthurirangan told TOI.
Having found that wind energy forecasting was helping the state load despatch centre (SLDC), it started evacuating more wind energy. “The IWPA brought in experts from countries like Germany, Denmark, and the United States to instil confidence among our SLDC officers so that it is possible to absorb all wind energy like they do in Europe and U.S.and this worked,” said Kasthurirangan.
Source: timesofindia.indiatimes
