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Mytrah Energy (India) Ltd is putting up a 100 MW farm near Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. The farm will be fully built by September, U.B. Reddy, Chief Operating Officer, Mytrah Energy, told Business Line on Friday.
The project is a part of Mytrah’s 240 MW expansion programme. Currently, the AIM-listed wind power company has generating capacity of 310 MW.
It is now building capacities in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka (100 MW) and Andhra Pradesh (40 MW), Reddy said.
Range of turbines
The first 310 MW used only Suzlon’s wind turbines. The upcoming 240 MW is split between the Spanish wind turbine major, Gamesa, and Chennai-based Regen Powertech.
The Tamil Nadu farm will use Regen Powertech’s machines, he said.
Asked about evacuation issues in Tamil Nadu, Reddy said evacuation was not a problem in the region where Mytrah’s wind farm was coming up. Reddy, who is also Secretary of the newly-formed Wind Independent Power Producers’ Association (WIPPA), said the Indian wind power industry was facing many structural problems.
Land acquisition issues
If in Tamil Nadu, the major problem was the lack of an evacuation infrastructure, in Karnataka, the big issue was getting approvals to use forest and agricultural lands for wind farms.
Ever since the ‘iron ore mining’ problem began, the Karnataka government has not been giving approvals for conversion of forest lands for wind farms, even though the wind power producers were prepared to give an equivalent amount of land elsewhere to the forest department.
In Maharashtra and Rajasthan, getting ‘right of way’ for access to wind farms was proving to be extremely difficult.
In general, land acquisition and getting right of way are fraught with problems, with a lot of interference from local politicians, he said.
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