Wind Energy Powering India 

Saturday, November 25, 2006   Permanent link to this post

I have written before about growing wind power capacity in India and also leadership roles of Indian wind power companies like Suzlon. Since that post in April 2006, the growth has only accelerated. Here are the numbers updated up to June 2006 (source).

Figure: Wind Power Capacity in June 2006

Growth of wind power in India is quite remarkable. In fact, preliminary sources indicates that wind power capacity has reached 6018 MW in India as of Sept 2006. The wind power story is now getting attention of popular press as well. Following is an excerpt from the article in New York Times:


Suzlon has expanded rapidly as global demand for wind energy has taken off. Its sales and earnings tripled in the quarter ended June 30, as the company earned the equivalent of $41.6 million on sales of $202.4 million.

The demand for wind turbines has particularly accelerated in India, where installations rose nearly 48 percent last year, and in China, where they rose 65 percent, although from a lower base. Wind farms are starting to dot the coastline of east-central China and the southern tip of India, as well as scattered mesas and hills across central India and even Inner Mongolia.
As oil prices stay high, renewable energy sources are becoming more competitive. For this reason, I am not too concerned about oil reaches $100 or beyond - that will only be helpful in the long run as it will focus our attention on developing renewable energy sources like Wind.

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Permanent link to this post. Posted by Sanjeev : 11:04 AM
Therer are 5 Comments. Post a Comment
In state of TamilNadu, this is visible as you drive down south of Madurai. This place harnesses the wind flow through the passes in the western ghats. TN seems to be doing well.

Good to see some one tracking non conventional energy sector.
Comment posted by Anonymous Sree : 25 November, 2006 11:45
There is a serious misconception in the main stream media about wind energy: Because the wind does not blow all the time, and because of breakdowns, maintenance, etc, the average capacity factor for wind energy is only about 40%. (see http://www.eia.gov ) This means that (1) only about 40% of the rated capacity gets to the electrical grid, and (2) the capitol cost of wind generation per GW is much higher than we are generally led to beleive.

I love the concept of wind energy, but it can't and won't make a sizeable dent in coal consumption - only nuclear energy can do that without CO2 gas emissions.

John Wheeler
"This Week in Nuclear"
Comment posted by Blogger John Wheeler : 25 November, 2006 19:54
John - while I agree with you that currently wind power does need higher capex, that figure is consistently coming down. With appropriate regulatory incentives, wind energy can be cost competitive with no long term environment impact. Now, surely wind power will not *replace* conventional power sources like coal, but it can be a valuable source for ~10-20% of energy requirement.

On your support for nuclear power - you got to also keep into account the long term cost of waste disposal and safety precautions. I am not convinced that nuclear power will be better on a full cost basis compared to wind power of same scale.

Anyways - thank you for your comment. I value your opinion.

Sanjeev
Comment posted by Blogger Sanjeev : 25 November, 2006 22:31
Hi, sorry it took so long to reply to your comment. You left a comment on my site http://www.westhoffdesigns.blogspot.com and said we had the same template and asked how I did the expandable archives. I had no clue so I looked through my settings and I think I have the answer. In Layout and hen Blog Archive I selected Hierarchy and Monthly. I hope that helps. :)
Comment posted by Blogger Westhoff Designs : 27 November, 2006 15:45
[...]resource[...]
Comment posted by Blogger laptop battery : 06 July, 2008 23:49

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