CHENNAI: The next step in better utilisation of the State’s prodigious wind power resources has been taken with the appointment of a special officer for Renewable Energy Management at Tamil Nadu Transmission Corporation. The officer is set to take up scheduling duties by May.
According to the Indian Wind Power Association, the combination of wind forecasting and proper scheduling could save the State a significant percentage of the two-three billion units of unused wind power that goes waste every year.
The appointment comes in the wake of the launch of India’s first State-wide wind power forecasting micro pilot project in Tamil Nadu in May last year. While the months that followed saw the National Institute of Wind Energy (NIWE) and Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) designed system record forecast accuracy rates of more than per cent. “Now, the TANTRANSCO has appointed a special officer in charge of Renewable Energy Management. By May, we expect the officer to take up scheduling as one of his duties and this will combine both accurate forecasting and scheduling to result in savings,” said A D Thirumoorthy, Chief Technical Advisor, IWPA.
TANTRANSCO confirmed the appointment of the officer - P R Muralidharan, Superintending Officer, TANTRANSCO. “There has been a steady decline in the amount of wind power being used in Tamil Nadu. There was a high amount of wind power that was going unused and the contention by the energy department was that there was no accurate forecast for when to schedule the grid for wind power. It was too unpredictable. But now, we, along with NIWE, have given them a highly workable accurate forecast system,” said K Kasturirangaian, Chairman, IWPA.
While the office of a scheduling officer is likely to make more productive use of wind power, the possibility of such use has only been raised by the accuracy of the forecasting system. Comprising sensors gathering data from 11,800 wind mills in the State, which is routed to all 120 sub-stations connected to wind mills and then to Chennai, the project gives a real time reading of the exact amount of wind power being generated in Tamil. Combined with NIWE’s forecasting systems, it provides a power forecast eight days in advance - for the entire 24 hour period, split into 15 minute sections.