Is the answer to the Indian Renewable story blowing in the wind?

Read about it on my article on Renewable Energy Magazine

Ritesh Pothan offer us an in-depth analysis of the wind industry present and future in India. “Wind is still considered an area of growth by the MNRE however the situation on the ground is a different story,” says Ritesh. “There is significant area of improvements and untapped potential by increasing hub heights which would result in future growth.” That said, our blogger is not convinced the answer to India’s energy future is blowing in the wind.

India is ranked fifth on the list of wind generating nations and a majority of India’s ~20GW renewable power portfolio is currently contributed by Wind. As of 2011, installed capacity crossed 14.5 GW’s, essentially driven by the Income Tax Holiday for 10 years as well asAccelerated Depreciation. India has been experiencing sporadic growth stories in renewable energy and wind energy was amongst the foremost renewable energy (RE) technologies that led the Indian RE revolution in India over the past two decades. A significant chunk of wind projects are in Tamil Nadu (though now slowing down due to the 14 month delay in payments), with the rest playing catch up.

Table 1: Wind Capacity Utilization Factors and Generation in windy states

The spurt in wind began at a time when the economy opened up and organizations needed conduits to defray supernormal profits. The accelerated depreciation route in investing in wind turbines saw a large number of unrelated organizations invest in mega wind farms, DLF amongst them, now selling all their wind holdings with other non-core assets.

Read the rest at renewableenergymagazine.com