Germany to share expertise on energy

Chennai: Germany is ready to share its expertise on renewable energy, in particular, onshore and offshore wind power, with India to help achieve its massive capacity addition plan for the green power by 2022, said Dr Robert Habeck, minister of power, Schleswig-Holstein in Germany on Monday.

Speaking to reporters after signing of the memorandum of understanding between Indian Wind Turbine Manufacturers Association and Messe Husum, a trade fair, organised to promote sustainable development, the minister said that German could share its 30-year experience in wind energy sector with India to avoid making the mistakes done by it.

Sharing his country’s experience in harnessing offshore wind energy, he said that his state, located between two seas, have best wind in western part but it is close to an environmentally sensitive national park. He said that so they have to set up their offshore windmills at a distance of 30 to 70 km away from the coast at a place where sea depths is over 30 m. “This has made offshore wind power very expensive. The feed-in tariff for wind energy from offshore plant is three times the cost of the onshore mills,” he said. However, he said that prices of power generated from the offshore wind mills would come down over the time.

Sarvesh Kumar, chairman of IWMTA, pointed out that cost of solar and even wind power was very high when it was started with. He said that when offshore project to the scale of 1000 mw was taken up, the cost of power generated would come down. Dr S. Gomathinayagam, director general of National Institute of Wind Energy, said that offshore wind project could be taken up in the country if any state came out with tariff policy. “Already the central government has released the offshore wind energy policy. Now the coastal states have to move the regulatory commission to fix tariff for offshore wind mills to attract investment,” he said.  

The NIWE, the premier wind power research institute in the country, has been studying the wind velocity in Dhanushkodi in Tamil Nadu and Gujarat.