For the last one decade the Chief Minister O Ibobi Singh has been giving similar answer related to power scarcity. Failure of the government to provide power has been attributed to the failure of the people to clear dues. As usual Ibobi tried the police tactics of asking police to accompany electricity officials while going to collect taxes and punishing defaulters. Greatest defaulters turned out to be government offices. A particular industrial unit was found using all the power the state was getting without any interruption. The problem is mismanagement. A good power minister and a sincere Chief Engineer can do magic. The potential for on-shore wind energy deployment in India is considerably higher than the official estimates— around 20 times and up to 30 times greater than the present government estimate of 102 gigawatts, according to a new study led by an Indian origin scientist.This landmark finding by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory 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,” said 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.”More than 95 percent of the wind potential is concentrated in five states in southern and western India.Even if the previously estimated potential of 102 GW is fully developed, wind would provide only about 8 percent of the projected electricity demand in 2022 and 5 percent in 2032.The new Berkeley Lab study has found the total techno-economic wind potential to range from 2,006 GW for 80-meter hub heights (an indication of how high the wind turbine stands above the ground) to 3,121 GW for 120-meter 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. We need to tap all the resources we have . We have to think locally to solve the problem rather than waiting for huge mega projects.
Read more / Original news source: http://manipur-mail.com/in-search-of-ever-eluding-power-supply/
