Wind energy experiment gone wrong in coastal Goa

 

 

 

 

Haste makes waste, that’s what Charles D’Silva a resident of the coastal village of Kanaguinim in south Goa discovered albeit painfully some fifteen years back. His ancestral village which has not been affected by mass tourism till now , has had been constantly facing water shortage and low electricity voltage problems for the last several years.  And when the Norwegian company installed a wind turbine in 1993 to tap the wind as an energy source in the region, residents like D’Silva were happy.

A sea of change was witnessed in the area with the installation of the wind turbine. The water pump motors which behaved erratically earlier – dependent, as they were on the fluctuating electricity supplied by the government – started working smoothly and the power fluctuations were a thing of the past.

A state which depends for its power needs from the neighboring states of Maharashtra, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh

But the initial euphoria lasted for just over one year. Things went back to square one after a year. An after a couple of years, the wind turbine a gift from the Norwegian government to the Indian government had to be dismantled. In the present day, the wind turbine which held a lot of promise to the residents of the area has been confined to history.

“Immediately after the inauguration I remember the water pumps in the area were functioning smoothly. The whole village would have been getting power if more turbines were installed at the same place,” recalls Silva, a former tour guide who has now taken a plunge into tourism related business along with his Swiss wife.

The sleepy village surrounded by mountains on three sides and Arabian Sea on one side was once mine for its minerals some four decades back – but the same abandoned mines have been reworked on, thanks to the demand for iron ore from China. The Open-cast mining has added to the discontent and inconvenience of the local residents, which has been opposed by the locals. The villagers had two decades back successfully opposed the setting up of golf course, thus keeping out the mass tourism away from the village. The tourism boom, which has been attributed to the many vices that the Goan youth have been afflicted with in the present era.

Silva who earlier worked as camp boss for the Norwegian company said:“It was the government of Norway who came and installed it and it was running for a period for about 6months with the Norwegian people in control of the (power) station. The Norwegian people were hurt by the treatment met to them by the local government. The Goa government did not even provided drinking water to the people on the site. The local residents helped them in providing water to drink and to have bath, which was supply in plastic cans. What a pity they were treated in this disdainful way.”

The Norwegian personnel contract was to teach and train the Goan electricity department personnel to mane the station. But sadly that did not came about but experiencing frustration and non cooperation from the Goan authorities they decided to close shop before the one year period and left after six month, recalls Silva..

“The saddest part was the Indian(Goan) guys could not even replace the fused on top of the tower, which in resulted in continuous breakdown and finally the owner of the land came in the picture to get the non-performing  white elephant to be dismantled from his property.

And elsewhere in India to all appearances, the wind energy sector in India is booming – but it could very well be nothing but an optical illusion. Despite rising installed capacity and huge investments, India does not manage to generate enough power from wind because of lower than average plant load factors (PLF).

This has been reported in its latest expose by Down To Earth magazine, a New Delhi-based science and environment fortnightly, published with assistance from the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE).

“We know that wind energy can and must play a critical role in securing our future needs,” says Sunita Narain, director, CSE. Over the past few years, the Government of India has given incentives to promote wind energy. Today, the country has over 8,700 megawatt (MW) of installed capacity. The country has also set a target to add another 10,000 MW in the 11th plan.

“But our review of wind energy in the country finds that there is an urgent need to reassess the current policies and incentive structures, so that the business of wind gets serious about generating power, and not just installing wind farms and reaping benefits from fiscal incentives,” says Narain.

The Down To Earth study has found that shockingly, wind energy -- while accounting for 6 per cent of the total installed power capacity in the country -- only contributes 1.6 of the country’s power generated! On an average, across the country, the PLF of wind energy has increased marginally from 13.5 per cent in 2003-04 to 15 per cent, but there are states like Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, where wind energy is functioning at a PLF of less than 10 per cent.

Maharashtra, ironically has more than tripled its wind capacity in the past few years, but has actually decreased in terms of its PLF. Today, in this energy-starved state, wind energy functions at a PLF of 11.7 per cent – a pathetically low figure compared to other states like Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, and certainly to global averages of 25-30 per cent.