Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) plans to retire all wind turbines of less than 1MW capacity which are built before the year 2000 . It has circulated a draft wind repowering policy saying that its financing arm, the Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA) will provide an additional interest rebate of 0.25% on loans taken for such repowering, apart from the rebate already available for new wind projects.
Most of the wind turbines installed up to the year 2000 are of capacity below 500kW. It is estimated that over 3000 MW capacity installation are from wind turbines of 500 kW or below. In order to optimally utilise wind energy resources, repowering is required.
It plans to provide other benefits such as accelerated depreciation (AD) or generation based incentive (GBI) to apply for repowered ones. Such projects will also be exempted from honouring the power purchase agreements they have signed to provide power for the period in which the repowering is carried out. The policy will be implemented through state nodal agencies.
However, wind power promoters feel that incentives are not sufficient. Along with replacing turbines, substations will have to demolished and new ones built. Most substations are 20 years old where repowering is more expensive than putting up a new project.
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