Government and wind energy projects - Fusion - WeRIndia

The government is planning to launch a new policy which gives incentives like an interest rebate of 0.25 percent for increasing the wind mill capacity to up to 1 MW. The center wants to encourage the use of wind energy in India.

The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has proposed a draft for Repowering of Wind Power Projects in the country to get comments from stakeholders by March 14, 2016.

The main aim of making this policy is to improve the usage of wind energy resources with help of proper framework and planning. The draft stated this aim and said that most of the wind turbines installed in the country up to the year 2000 are of capacity below 500 kW. They were installed at sites with high wind energy potential. This means that the turbines are not being used up to their fullest potential.

The draft noted this point and said that these projects should be repowered. The incentives for repowering these projects will be provided by Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA). They will provide an additional interest rate rebate of 0.25 per cent over and above the interest rate rebates already available to the new wind projects being financed by it.

The benefits which are available to the new wind projects like Accelerated Depreciation or GBI (Generation Based Incentives) as per applicable conditions would also be available to the repowering projects. These repowering projects would be started by the respective State Nodal Agency or Organization involved in promotion of wind energy in the state.

These projects are important because the majority of renewable power capacity in the country comes from wind energy. India started its wind power harnessing before 1990. Now, the installed capacity is over 25 GW. This makes India the fourth largest in world after China, USA and Germany.

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