Tamil Nadu gets 33% of its electricity requirements from cheap Wind power with better Forecasting and Transmission
China installed a gargantuan 20 GW of Solar Energy capacity in just 6 months causing the solar market to crash (once again!!!!)
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August 26, 2016Wind Energy – Tamil Nadu
Tamil Nadu has always been the leading state in India in terms of wind energy, with massive number of wind farms installed in the state. It has been 
historically the No.1 state in terms of wind energy capacity though in recent times the growth has stalled because of the unavailability of transmission infrastructure to move the power from the wind farms to the grid. However, with increasing investment being made in transmission infrastructure that problem has been resolved and the perennial problem of wind power curtailment has been substantially reduced. Given that TN has more than 8 GW of wind energy capacity grid balancing has become a critical issue in the state, as movement of power to other states is still very difficult given the green energy corridors linking TN to other states has not come up at the pace required due to issues in the right of way (ROW).
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However, the state has been making strides in improving its scheduling and forecasting capabilities even establishing a renewable energy management center (REMC) as its state load dispatch centre (SLDC). While the average wind power supply has been 22% of the state’s overall power demand in the last 3 months, in 1 day in August a record breaking 33% of the state’s supply came from wind power with more than 4.7 GW of wind energy capacity running at full tilt during August 16. This is a huge achievement not only for TN, but for the country’s overall power sector showing that India can achieve substantial integration of intermittent wind and solar power without the grid failing.
Not only is the power green but also cheap. TN is procuring wind power at INR 4.1/kWh, which is less than 6 cents/kWh compared to more expensive short term thermal power procurement which comes at almost 7.5 cents/kWh. TN is showing that the country is making the right choice by increasing reliance on solar and wind power with a target of increasing roughly 35 GW of RE in India now to 175 GW GW by 2022 which means a 400% increase. While thermal power capacity will also increase post 2022, I think that it will become cheaper to install solar and wind power even with the increased costs of integrating them into the grid and using grid balancing sources such as energy storage, demand management etc.