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A new assessment of wind energy in India by
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has found that the potential for on-shore
wind energy deployment is far higher than the official estimates—about 20 times
and up to 30 times greater than the current government estimate of 102 GW. This
landmark finding may have significant impact on India’s renewable energy strategy
as it attempts to cope with a massive and chronic shortage of electricity.
“The main importance of this study, why it’s
groundbreaking, is that wind is one of the most cost-effective and mature
renewable energy sources commercially available in India, with an installed capacity
of 15 GW and rising rapidly,” says Berkeley Lab scientist Amol Phadke, the lead
author of the report. “The cost of wind power is now comparable to that from
imported coal and natural gas-based plants, and wind can play a significant
role in cost effectively addressing energy security and environmental concerns.”
Even if the previously estimated potential of 102
GW is fully developed, wind would provide only about 8% of the projected
electricity demand in 2022 and 5% in 2032. The new Berkeley Lab study has found
the total techno-economic wind potential to range from 2,006 GW for 80-m hub
heights (an indication of how high the wind turbine stands above the ground) to
3,121 GW for 120-m hub heights. Given these new estimates, the availability of
wind energy can no longer be considered a constraint for wind to play a major
role in India’s
electricity future.
Phadke and his team have been discussing their
findings informally and formally with several key government agencies in India and have
gotten positive responses. “The key agency in charge, the Ministry of New and
Renewable Energy (MNRE), has now signed a Memorandum of Understanding with
Berkeley Lab to collaborate on several issues related to potential estimates
and wind energy integration,” said Jayant Sathaye, who leads the International
Energy Studies Group at Berkeley Lab.
Ranjit Bharvirkar, a senior consultant at Itron
Inc. and one of the other authors of the study, said part of the motivation for
reassessing India’s wind
potential came from recent reassessments of wind potential in the United States and China. Both found substantial
increases over the previous assessments—a ten-fold jump in China and a 50% increase in capacity in the United States
and 400% by energy. Improved wind technology, including higher efficiency and
hub heights, accounted for much of the increase along with more advanced
mapping techniques.
The previous wind potential estimate in India of
102 GW is based on the assumption that only two percent of the windy land is
available for wind power development. However, this assumption is not based on
any assessment of land availability. The Berkeley Lab study undertook a
systematic assessment of the availability of land using publicly available GIS
(geographic information system) data on topography and land use and found a
significantly higher availability of land that can potentially be used for wind
power development, which is the primary reason for the higher potential
estimates.
The study excluded land with low-quality wind,
slopes greater than 20 degrees, elevation greater than 1,500 m and certain
other unsuitable areas such as forests, bodies of water, and cities. The
researchers obtained off-the-shelf wind speed data for heights of 80 m, 100 m,
and 120 m from 3TIER.
The study also finds that the total footprint
required to develop high-quality wind energy (that is, wind turbines at 80 m
with a capacity factor greater than 25%, which would yield a potential of about
543 GW in India) is
approximately 1,629 square kilometers, or 0.05% of the total land area in India. The
footprint is not large because, typically, only about 3% of a wind farm is
occupied by the wind turbines and related infrastructure; the rest of the land
can be used for other purposes.