Chennai: Solid waste management in the city and other urban local bodies in the state might get better with Tamil Nadu Electricity Regulatory Commission (TNERC) proposing to fix a tariff of Rs 5.34 per unit of electricity generated from the waste to energy plants.
Fixing of tariff for the electricity generated from the municipal solid waste based power plants would make the investment on the waste to energy projects attractive. TNERC has proposed a tariff of Rs 5.34 per unit excluding accelerated depreciation of Rs 0.45 per unit and also has invited comments from stakeholders before August 11.
TNERC’s tariff proposal came in the wake of the central government’s recently revised tariff policy that mandates power distributors to buy all the electricity from waste-to-energy plants in a state and the remunerative tariff set for it by the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) has helped raise investor interest in this segment. CERC in October fixed a tariff of '7.9 per unit of electricity sold by waste-to-energy plants.
The waste to energy plants make use of the waste unfit for recycling and composting. The most common waste to energy technology used in India were Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF), biomethanation and waste incineration.
Pallavaram and Tambaram municipalities are jointly setting up TN’s first waste to energy plant based on RDF technology in Vengadamangalam at a cost of '100 crore along with an organic compost yard. The proposed plant would generate 2.9 mw of power a day from 300 tonnes.
“In the first phase, the work on a transfer station cum material recovery facility using technologies to generate RDF and organic compost at the processing facility were completed. The work on plant will be completed in a year,” a Pallavaram municipality engineer.
The energy generated from waste is a green power and it offers countless socio-economic advantages and substantial environmental gains, said J. Daniel Chellappa, senior scientist, Technical Coordination Wing, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. Nisargruna biogas plant developed by Barc offers decentralised solid waste management solution by converting biodegradable waste into methane and organic manure, he said.
A one-tonne facility with power generation could be set up at a cost of '19 lakh, he said, adding that every ton of a biodegradable waste, depending on operational efficiency of the plant, could produce one to 1.5 cylinder (a cylinder capacity of 14.5 kg) of methane gas which can be used as fuel for kitchen or for power generation and also 85 to 100 kg of organic manure.
