OREANDA-NEWS. Tata Power, India's largest integrated power utility, announced crossing over 800MU generation from its wind power projects in FY13. In the span of one year, the company's wind farms have generated 813MUs as against 569MUs in the previous year, recording an incremental generation of 43 percent in FY13. This growth is mainly attributed to the Agaswadi wind farms, which had an increased generation of 85MUs, and Poolavadi with 140MUs. Tata Power has a total installed capacity of 398MW in wind generation with plants across five states, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, which are the leading states in promoting wind power generation in India. Tata Power has adopted the following technologies In order to optimise its operations:

Surge protection module in pitch power supply unit for reducing pitching error and convertor errors.

Vacuum-type slip ring to increase the maintenance cycle of wind turbines.

Air gap monitoring at bearings to prevent bearing failures.

Speaking on achieving this milestone, Anil Sardana, managing director, Tata Power, said, “Tata Power is developing wind power projects of over 160MW in India. We are proud to have increased our wind generation capacity by a record 43 percent, which proves our commitment towards to generating 20-25 percent of our total generation capacity from clean energy sources.”

Tata Power Renewable Energy (TPREL), a 100 percent subsidiary of Tata Power, has recently signed an SPA for acquisition of 100 percent shareholding in AES Saurashtra Windfarms (ASW), a 100 percent subsidiary of AES Corporation. ASW owns and operates a 39.2MW wind farm near Dwarka in Jamnagar district of Gujarat. The project, which is fully operational since January 2012, has executed a power purchase agreement with GUVNL for sale of the electricity at a tariff of Rs3.56/kWh for the duration of the project. The project is registered with UNFCCC as a CDM project and is eligible to receive CERs. The project is also registered under the generation-based Incentive scheme of MNRE.

The company's international wind presence includes a joint venture company in South Africa with Exxaro, Cennergi (Pty). Cennergi has recently announced financial closure of its 95MW Tsitsikamma Wind Farm Project and 135MW Amakhala Emoyeni Wind Farm Project The wind projects will be located in Eastern Cape, South Africa, and are expected to achieve commercial operations in 2016. Power purchase agreements and implementation agreements for these projects were signed with Eskom and the Department of Energy, Government of South Africa, respectively, on May 9, 2013.

Tata Power is also pursuing new environment-friendly technologies and has installed micro turbines to understand their performance in Indian conditions. The purpose of this project is to determine the most cost-effective forms of wind energy which can be installed on rooftops or in remote areas where there is sufficient wind energy. Micro turbines of capacities of 2kW from Windtronics, 5kW and 12kW from WePower and 5kW from Unitron have been installed at the test bed site.