Asia Report: India's Wind Potential 30 Times Greater Than Believed?

Renewable Energy World Editors
March 26, 2012 | 8 Comments

A recent reassessment of the India wind energy market blows the lid off of previous capacity estimates.

The nation has been operating under analysis from the Center for Wind Energy Technology, which puts the nation’s onshore capacity at about 100 GW. But recent reassessments from China to Germany prompted independent researchers and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) to dig a little deeper and look at the potential in light of new tools and new technology.

In a paper in the international renewable energy journal Renewable Energy, Indian wind energy expert Jami Hossain used the Geographical Information System Platform to raise the potential to 2,000 GW. The LBNL subsequently moved that total even higher, pushing the potential to 3,000 GW. That’s 30 times the current estimate.

“We have tried to further refine and improve these figures based on competing uses of land in the country but with the continued improvement in technology, the onshore potential is indeed very high compared to what was assessed earlier,” said Hossain. “The gross under-estimation by CWET has prevented the policy makers and the planning bodies in the country such as the planning commission and Central Electricity Authority in recognizing wind energy as a major and possibly mainstream source of wind energy. With rising oil prices and uncertainties associated as well as major bottlenecks in supply of coal, the findings assume importance from an energy security and global environmental perspective."

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BY THE NUMBERS

China Strengthens Wind Lead

2011 Installed Wind Capacity in China by Leading Region
Inner Mongolia: 3.7 GW
Hebei: 2.1 GW
Shandong,: 1.9 GW
Ningxia: 1.7 GW
Liaoning: 1.2 GW

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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

8 Comments

Anumakonda Jagadeesh
April 7, 2012

Mr.vijayaillu:

Wind Speed increases with height and it is called WIND SHEAR. It increases to certain height only but not infinity! On the other hand certain wind regimes(depending on the surface roughness) have negative Wind Shear.

Beyond 100 meters of Tower height and blade diameter it is very difficult to carry the equipment to remote areas especially with bad roads. That is why big wind turbines are erected off shore.

Wind is the most established technology among Renewables.

Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India
Wind Energy Expert
E-mail: anumakonda.jagadeesh@gmail.com

PRABHAKAR prabhakar
April 7, 2012

The wind energy is more prone and available with the hub height increase, as excepting the city we have abundant mining areas, hill tops plus all the more vegetation ,the estimate may be even verily lightly taken. Who has done the real field work?.it is the engineering technical community to get hold of exploring the supports to harness the energy.

Anumakonda Jagadeesh
March 28, 2012

Dear rolf-westgard-67277:

Grid evacuation is a problem not confined to China alone but for many countries. As Lenin put it,QUALITY COMES OUT OF QUANTITY, the Chinese Wind Turbines have improved over the years.
Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore (AP),India
Wind Energy Expert
E-mail: anumakonda.jagadeesh@gmail.com

rolf westgard
March 28, 2012

In a vast prairie to the north of Hohhot, the capital city of north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, hundreds of wind turbines stand like a vast, unbroken forest.
The turbines have created both opportunities and problems for the region's power companies.
"I long for wind, but I also fear wind," says Su Changyou, a manager of a wind farm located in Inner Mongolia's Siziwang Banner (County).
"During high winds, my wind turbines will rotate in full gear, which means higher profits. But sometimes, my telephone rings with calls from power grid controllers ordering us to limit our power generation," says Su.

Ever since Su's wind farm was connected to China's power grid last May, only about 60 percent of the farm's turbines have been in operation. The rest of the turbines must remain idle to avoid overloading the grid.
Qi Laisheng, general manager of the Inner Mongolia subsidiary of Longyuan Power, China's largest wind farm operator, says "these things happen all the time here. About a quarter of the turbines on my wind farm have to remain idle, even on the windiest days."
Grid access has become a nightmare for Inner Mongolia's burgeoning wind power industry.

These problems compound as the % of wind to the grid gets above single digits. Capacity factor for China's turbines is about the same as in the U.S. - 25-30%.
Capacity factor for nuclear is above 90% and unlike wind it doesn't turn itself off.

Anumakonda Jagadeesh
March 28, 2012

The success of Wind in China is spectacular. China entered in wind 2000. I attended International Conference on Wind in Tsinghua University and at that time they were planning for a major wind farm. It is amazing that China is world leader in Wind Today.
At the end of 2011, wind power in the People's Republic of China accounted for 62,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity generating capacity, and China has identified wind power as a key growth component of the country's economy. With its large land mass and long coastline, China has exceptional wind resources. China aims to "have 100 gigawatts (GW) of on-grid wind power generating capacity by the end of 2015 and to generate 190 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) of wind power annually". Researchers from Harvard and Tsinghua University have found that China could meet all of their electricity demands from wind power through 2030.

Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India
Wind Energy Expert
E-mail: anumakonda.jagadeesh@gmail.com

Gregor Giebel
March 28, 2012

One of the reasons for a reassessment might be the possibility to look to finer scales in the wind assessment. There's a recent slide from our lab showing that the wind resource increases a lot when starting to do a micro-scale study, because the local increases in wind speed (hilltops etc) are glossed over by the coarse resolution of the mesoscale (i.e., the usual weather) models.
See http://www.ewec2010proceedings.info/ewea2011/allfiles/871_EWEA2011presentation.ppt, slide 12. You might not be allowed to go there without password, but in a couple of months the proceedings should open up for the world.

rolf westgard
March 27, 2012

Thirty times near zero isn't much.

Anumakonda Jagadeesh
March 27, 2012

The article reads:

" The LBNL subsequently moved that total even higher, pushing the potential to 3,000 GW. That's 30 times the current estimate."

I can understand if it is double or triple but not 30 times! That means all the money spent by Indian Government on the earlier estimates is a waste.

There was an article on: America's Wind Energy Potential Triples in New Estimate
By Alexis Madrigal,February 19, 2010 WIRED SCIENCE

"The amount of wind power that theoretically could be generated in the United States tripled in the newest assessment of the nation's wind resources.
Current wind technology deployed in non environmentally protected areas could generate 37,000,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year, according to the new analysis conducted by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and consulting firm AWS Truewind. The last comprehensive estimate came out in 1993, when Pacific Northwest National Laboratory pegged the wind energy potential of the United States at 10,777,000 gigawatt-hours.
Both numbers are greater than the 3,000,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity currently consumed by Americans each year. Wind turbines generated just 52,000 gigawatt-hours in 2008, the last year for which annual statistics are available."

Does it mean India has more windy sites than USA? The United States has incredible wind power resources.Windiest spots in the United States are off the coasts, in the mountains, and right down through the Great Plains, where a band of strong winds stretches from North Dakota to Texas.

Does India has Such windy sites?

Let us be realistic. Politicians and Investors are taken away by such tall estimates.

Incidentally Wind Installations in United States 46,919 MW and India 16,084 MW at the end of December 2011.
Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India
Wind Energy Expert
E-mail: anumakonda.jagadeeesh@gmail.com

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