Wind powers Campco chocolate unit

Windmills have been helping a cooperative from Dakshina Kannada district to meet nearly three-fourth of the power requirement of its chocolate factory and saving more than ₹1 crore a year in power bills for the last five years.

The Central Arecanut and Cocoa Marketing and Processing Cooperative (Campco) Ltd has been harnessing wind energy to meet power requirements at its chocolate factory in Puttur.

3 windmills

The cooperative had set up a 1.25 MW windmill at Halthimalapura in Hoovinahadagali taluk of Bellary district in 2009. In 2011-12, it set up two more units of 0.85 MW each at Nej village in Chikkodi taluk of Belagavi district. Suresh Bhandary, Managing Director of Campco, told

BusinessLine that the power wheeled from these three units to the grid of the Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Ltd stood at 44.10 lakh units in 2016-17. Of this, the Hoovinahadagali unit contributed 18.85 lakh units and the Chikkodi unit 25.25 lakh units.

He said that the establishment of windmills has helped the cooperative to save over 70 per cent of the power requirements at its chocolate factory in the last five years.

The factory requires around 60-68 lakh units of power a year.

Savings

The total savings in power bill were around ₹1.78 crore during 2016-17 as over 80 per cent of power requirement of the chocolate factory was met by these windmills.

Stating that the production of wind energy depends on the wind in the locations concerned, he said the power wheeled to the grid stood at 41.30 lakh units during 2015-16.

These units had helped meet 73 per cent of the power requirements of the factory in 2015-16.

The cooperative had invested ₹6.57 crore and ₹10.31 crore for the establishment of windmills in 2008-09 and 2011-12, respectively, he added.