Andhra Pradesh mulls policy for wind power

Hyderabad: With the AP government focusing on renewable sources of energy and planning massive increase in wind power capacity, the latest APERC order has not allowed a tariff hike as contested by developers.

In fact, wind power generation has been riddled with issues like developers not maintaining separate accounts and showing very little plant load factor (PLF). To deal with such issues, the government is working out a separate wind power policy.

Wind power developers too have shown no interest in continuing with the power purchase agreements they had signed previously. The agreement compels them to sell power to the state discoms at the tariff fixed by the APERC.

Wind power developers said in their petitions that the PPAs signed by them were one sided and they were coerced into signing them and therefore had sought a hike tariff at which discoms purchase the power generated (Rs 3.37 per unit currently). The petition was however rejected by the APERC.

Also it was pointed out that the PLF possible was as high as 20 percent, whereas developers are showing as low are seven percent PLF.

As per the previous APCPDCL’s submission to the commission, “NEDCAP, which is a nodal agency for having windmills in Anantapur district, is recording PLF of over 20 per cent.”

“In fact, many wind power producers have been showing reduced PLF to justify low generation shown on the paper. It has also been pointed out by the discoms that lesser generation is primarily due to non-maintenance of plants and lower capacity utilisation of plants. These are very vague reasons and a separate policy is definitely needed to put an order into the wind power sector as currently it is completely unregulated,” said a discom official.