Chennai: Windmills have come to the rescue of Tangedco once again following the sudden outages faced by three new thermal power plants in Mettur, North Chennai and Vallur.
Generation from windmills, reduced to negligible in the post peak wind season of May-October, has picked up in the last few days due to strong northeast winds, said Indian Wind Power Association chairman K. Kasthurirangaian.
“There is a good generation from windmills in the last few days due to northeast monsoon winds. On Tuesday, the windmills recorded a maximum generation of 1,300 megawatt in the post peak wind season,” he told Deccan Chronicle.
Kasthurirangaian said that in the post wind season period between November and March, windmills would generate whenever there was wind. “Generation will not be regular” he added. However he complained that even now Tangedco was not evacuating power generated in some of the windmills.
“At least during the peak wind season, we know there is a problem in wind evacuation. We do not understand why they (Tangedco) are backing down now?” he asked.
According to Tamil Nadu Transmission Corporation statistics, the total generation from wind power went up from 6.24 million units on December 20 to 17.21 MU on December 24.
The generation from wind power picked up at a time when the five thermal stations with a combined generation capacity of 2510 mw were under repair. Two 600 MW units of North Chennai Stage II plant and a 600 MW unit of Mettur thermal power stations were under repair and they are expected to resume generation in couple of days.
Power generation is suspended in a 500 MW unit of Vallur thermal station due to coal shortage since December 15 and it is expected to put on track on January 5. A 210 MW unit of Tuticorin plant under emergency maintenance from November 26, will be restarting generation on January 5.
