Tangedco evacuates all-time high wind generation of 5,689 MW

CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation evacuated an all-time high 5,689 MW of wind power on Sunday evening bettering its own record set three days ago.

In a tweet, Tangedco chairman and managing director Rajesh Lakhani said that it evacuated 5,689 MW of wind power at 17:02 hours higher than the previous peak evacuation of 5,535 MW on June 30. “This is possible only because of meticulous planning in grid managed by State Load Dispatch Centre (SLDC) Headed by Chief Engineer Padmini and Superintendent Engineer Suburayan,” he wrote.

The State has an installed wind energy capacity of 8,618 MW as against the total capacity of 33,877 MW including both renewables and conventional sources.

Sources in Tangeco said that all the wind power generation is being evacuated during the peak wind season which begins in mid-May and lasts till September. “We expect the wind generation might go up further in the coming months,” sources added. The officials also said that Tangedco was selling surplus energy during the wind power season through the power exchange.

Indian Wind Power Association chairman K Kasthurirangain said that not only all-time high wind generation, but Tangedco has also consumed 104 million units a day which is the highest ever. “This is the best ever evacuation,” he said. He said that SLDC has been evacuating the wind power without any curtailment for the last one and half months. “It's a good step forward,” he added.

A wind power generator, on condition of anonymity, said that Tangedco sudden evacuation of all the wind power without curtailment could be due to the coal shortage faced by the thermal power plants. “Tangedco might be conserving the coal and building a stock for the post-wind season,” he said, adding that for every one million units of wind energy generation, Tangedco saves 750 metric tonnes of coal by avoiding thermal power generation.