Tangedco Chairman and Managing Director Rajesh Lakhani on Friday tweeted that the State utility had generated and evacuated the highest ever wind energy capacity of 5,535 MW on June 30, 2022.
Industry players hailed the achievement and hoped the year 2022-23 would be the best year for wind energy in Tamil Nadu.
Between April and June (90 days) this year, 5,950 million units of wind energy was consumed in the State. This was 500 million units higher compared to the corresponding period last year, said K. Kasthurirangain, chairman of Indian Wind Power Association.
“The winds are very good and for the last one-and-a-half months, there is no grid drop across the State. This means all the wind energy produced is evacuated,” he said.
The State had an installed wind energy capacity of 8,618 MW and with high winds since May 15, generation had picked up.
Almost 80% of the installed wind energy capacity was for captive use by industries and about 200 MW was added in the last one year. “The Central government has said that the arrears for wind energy producers will be paid with interest along with the current payments. We need to wait and see,” Mr. Kasthurirangain said.
A.D. Thirumoorthy, State-level Renewable Energy Committee Member, said there had been no curtailment of wind energy in the last four weeks and the utility had done a good job.
K. Venkatachalam, Chief Advisor, Tamil Nadu Spinning Mills Association, said the utility had to be appreciated for not curtailing wind energy generation. Another industry official said the utility had also been selling surplus wind energy to other states.
Tamil Nadu saw an all-time high power demand of 17,563 MW on April 29, 2022. As per information from State Load Despatch Centre, the power consumption was 362.12 million units on June 30.
(With inputs from M. Soundariya Preetha in Coimbatore and Sanjay Vijayakumar in Chennai) .
