‘Tamil Nadu windmills need repowering policy’
Notable because
In light of the evolving wind turbine generator technology, MNRE published the draft wind repowering policy in October 2022 to incorporate latest technology, improve land utilisation, and increase wind power generation capacity. However, to facilitate the repowering of old wind turbines, challenges such as evacuation infrastructure modification, decommissioning costs, and lack of a conducive regulatory environment need to be addressed.
What to look out for in the months ahead
As of April 2023, the installed wind power capacity in India was 42.8 GW and MNRE estimates it to reach 100 GW by 2030. Since wind rich sites are scarce and existing good wind resource sites have already been utilised by older turbines with lower CUF, what steps will the government take apart from releasing a policy to make wind repowering a financially appealing case to the developers and reach the 100 GW target?