The Wind Independent Power Producers Association has filed a petition with the Delhi High Court against the power regulator, the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission’ over the Commission’s recent ‘scheduling and forecasting’ order.
The order asks wind power generators to forecast their generation of the next day, for every 15 minute interval and face penalty if the actual generation is 30 per cent more or less over the submitted forecast.
However, this is applicable only for wind turbines installed after May 2010.
About a week back, the President of WIPPA, Mr Sunil Jain, had told Business Line that the it would be pretty difficult to be within the ‘plus or minus 30 per cent’ band and the power producers would face penalties. These penalties, he said, would eat away between 12 and 15 per cent of the companies’ profits.
However, some others in the industry feel that the impact on profits would not be that severe, because the Commission has also allowed the power producers to change their schedule as many as eight times during the day.
WIPPA had asked for some time—a year—to comply. It had told the Commission that the power producers would submit the forecasts, but no penalty, please. Apparently, the Commission has not been in a mood to relent, perhaps because it has twice put off ‘scheduling and forecasting’ at the behest of the industry.
It is learnt that Goldman Sachs-funded ReNew Power Ventures Ltd, a wind power generator, has also joined WIPPA in filing the petition with the Delhi High Court.
Business Line learns that the manufacturers of wind turbines were not quite sanguine about any legal action against the Commission, lest the regulator should harden its stand against the industry. Some time back, in response to a query, wind turbine major Suzlon had said that while there could be “implementation challenges om the short term, experts see this as a major step in further integrating wind energy with the grid, helping ‘mainstream’ wind even further.”
The Indian Wind Turbine Manufacturers Association refused to comment on the issue.
India today has a wind power capacity of 19,618 MW (as of last month).
ramesh.m@thehindu.co.in