I was reading that India is ranked fifth in producing wind power and I was overwhelmed with the ranking. Then I did some googling (thanks to google) and found that the countries with the highest total installed wind power capacity are Germany (16,629 MW), Spain (8,263 MW), the United States (6,740 MW), Denmark (3,117 MW) and India (3,000 MW). Another link posted below claims India's current capacity to be around 6000MW and that India is fourth largest producer of wind power in the world (refer source 4 listed below). Yet, India has a mere 6% share in global wind energy generation as compared to Germany leading with around 35% of global share. The total wind energy potential estimated in India is staggering 65000MW (I hope that the calculations are done correctly). So that leaves a good pool of wind energy still to be tapped.
Sometimes I wonder the challenges that are faced while coming up with a wind power project. In terms of incentives there are great incentives by the Indian government. The fiscal incentives extended by the Indian government to the wind energy sector include
- Direct taxes – 80 % depreciation in the first year of installation of a project.
- Tax holiday for 10 years.
- No income tax to be paid on power sales to utilities.
The government’s share in India’s wind power generation is still 3%, a figure again I hope that it is calculated correctly, refer the link 4 below. I think that the Indian government should have taken the lead in wind power than the private industry. I know that many of Indian villages still do not get the minimum share of total electric power generated in the country. Many farmers do not have electricity to irrigate their field, many hospitals (of course the rural ones) do not have electricity supply to carry out the operations, so do many of the school and houses. I do not see that acquiring land is the challenge faced in India. Clearly, it will not be difficult to convince a farmer to lease his 1 acre of land for installing a wind turbine, in return of some rent, power for his field and house. Then where are the roadblocks?
Well I did some more googling and couldn’t find any so I will keep wondering the meager state of wind power generation in India. It may not be meager as compared to world but I will call it meager when it comes to Indian needs and the current Indian scenario, only because there is a lot more potential available in India.
While writing this complete draft I was thinking in other direction also, is wind power absolutely free? May I will write something in my next blog.
3 comments:
Generating energy from wind has some disadvantages. Tha major one is effect on the monsoon, since the propellor is opposing the wind flow... this might be the reason for india no going ahead... my view :)
Harnessing wind power shouldn't involve rocket-science, as far as I think... I believe it's mainly government apathy/indifference that the tapping of the potential has been so shallow, in India.
As such, it's hard to believe the dearth of energy and resource crunch we face currently, despite the abundance of "raw" solar/wind/water (in terms of harvesting) energy.
The second thing, as you pointed out, is also the lack of awareness in rural areas.
Let's hope these variables change with time, not just to keep you & me from wondering "why?" but also, to improve upon the power scenario.
R n D kar rahe ho aap to!
nice hai!
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