Techno-Economic Feasibility of Wind Power Farms in India

Abstract

Wind is a powerful and renewable source of energy that flows in every corner of the surface of the planet. As the world moves towards renewable and alternate energy sources, the potential of wind energy has been recognized and methods to use it to its maximum potential are being explored. India has been harnessing wind power over the years, but only lately, it has sent an ambitious target of achieving 60 gigawatts (GW) of wind installed capacity by 2022. The government has issued several tenders to invite private players or Independent Power Producers (IPPs) to develop wind energy projects. Many foreign investors and the Private Equity players have shown interest in investing in this growing renewable energy (RE) market in India. However, developing a wind project comes with lot many challenges as compared to any other RE project. These challenges range from land availability to seeking grid connectivity approvals and evacuation of the power. Along with this, the current reverse bidding process for the tariffs, have made the per unit tariffs to cost as low as INR 2.4. Hence, it is important to consider the technical and commercial feasibility of the project to function at these tariffs. This paper studies the current scenario of wind energy in the Indian market and analysis the potential for the development of wind projects. It also analyses the technical and commercial feasibility of the project by assuming a 300 MW project, having INR 2.5 as tariff, using Wind Resource Assessment (WRA) and Financial Model.