T.N. evacuates wind energy of 120.25 million units, the highest-ever

State has consistently evacuated over 100 million units for six days this month

Tamil Nadu on July 9 evacuated 120.25 million units of wind energy, an all-time high. So far in this month, the State has consistently evacuated over 100 million units for six days.

On Sunday, Tangedco chairman and managing director Rajesh Lakhani tweeted that the evacuation was an all-time high in Tamil Nadu, and maybe across the country too. No State would have generated and absorbed so much wind power in a day. “Will fact check the country data once again,” he added.

As per the data shared with The Hindu, the State had evacuated 107.76 million units on July 8, 101.71 million units on July 6, 111.13 million units on July 5, 106.91 million units on July 4 and 103.96 million units on July 3. Prior to this month, the previous record was 107.552 million units on August 7, 2020.

K. Kasthurirangaian, chairman of Indian Wind Power Association, said wind energy constituted 35% of electricity consumption in the State on July 9. The winds continue to be high, and evacuation has also been high so far this year.

“Season is good and (wind energy) absorption is also good,” said A.D. Thirumoorthy, State-level Renewable Energy Committee member. “There is no power shortage and the State is in surplus now. In isolated pockets, there are reports of power supply disruptions. It is more of local distribution issues and should be addressed locally. Even in some wind energy generation areas, there are reports of curtailments. But these are less compared to past years, and occur mainly because of infrastructure issues. The Tangedco should address these so that there are no major problems in the future,” he said.

Demand has revived for most of the High Tension (HT) industries, said Tamil Nadu Electricity Consumers Association president S. Ashok. With the exception of the pumpsets industry, almost all other sectors were seeing market revival and higher production.

“For those who have windmills for captive use, the current level of wind energy evacuation is a huge benefit. There are problems in some wind energy generation centres as transformers are not functioning. Even with such constraints, wind energy evacuation is high and that has to be welcomed,” he said.

According to data from State Load Despatch Centre, the overall power consumption in Tamil Nadu was 340.399 million units on July 9.

The all-time high consumption was 388.078 million units on April 29, 2022.

With inputs from M. Soundariya Preetha in Coimbatore and Sanjay Vijayakumar in Chennai