Chennai Green Energy Projects & Developments

[kannan infratech]

Thanks Guys for the encouragement.

We are struck with Economic viability issues. Passion is one but economics is different.

There are also many issues with TNEB for wheeling the power produced by Solar / wind etc.

[shekar]

Spanish wind turbine manufacturer Gamesa is expanding its presence in India by putting up three more facilities that will make various parts for the wind turbines. It has an assembly plant at Red Hills, a northern suburb of Chennai.

The company will invest about Rs 500 crore in units that will make blades, towers and nacelles (the cone like structure on the top that covers all the critical parts of the wind turbine).

The units to make blades and towers will come up near Vadodara in Gujarat, and the one that will make nacelles near Chennai. Apart from the investment in these plants, Gamesa will also invest in building a land bank for wind energy projects. The blade factory and the unit that will fabricate the towers, which will be through a joint venture, will be ready by September and the nacelle unit by the first quarter of 2012.

Opens R&D centre

Gamesa India, which has invested about Rs 300 crore on its Red Hills plant, has opened a research and development centre on Chennai's IT corridor. It hopes to employ about 100 engineers by the year-end. “It will be integrated with what we are doing worldwide. A lot of work being done in Spain will be passed on to the R&D centre here,” says Mr Kymal.

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/...cle1520383.ece

[TShyam]

Originally Posted by shekar

Gamesa India, which has invested about Rs 300 crore on its Red Hills plant, has opened a research and development centre on Chennai's IT corridor. It hopes to employ about 100 engineers by the year-end. “It will be integrated with what we are doing worldwide. A lot of work being done in Spain will be passed on to the R&D centre here,” says Mr Kymal.

Thats awesome. Headstart in R&D in the technology of tomorrow. Gamesa being the world's largest windmill developer, this is definitely a feather in the cap.

I know Vestas has manufacturing here, any idea whether they have R&D centre in Chennai?

[saysenthil]

Wind power major, Vestas, has opened a state-of-the-art test centre for wind turbine components in Chennai. Vestas Technology R&D is also expanding its existing office space at Chennai by an additional 35,000 square feet.

"The new Test Center will play an important role for Vestas. This new facility adds to our global testing and verification of wind turbine components to further improve their reliability and performance," said Servet Sert, Vice President of Test, Verification and Quality for Vestas Technology R&D.

http://machinist.in/index.php?option...=3121&Itemid=2

[TShyam]

Cool That is 2 of the top 2. Only GE and Siemens are missing. Hope they come soon too.

[nerinbush]

Great information... We have to move now towards Green Energy. All the Developments should relate to Green Energy....keep going (Go Green)


greenmeetingguide.com

[chennaidesi]

Originally Posted by TShyam

Cool That is 2 of the top 2. Only GE and Siemens are missing. Hope they come soon too.

They will always prefer a specific city which I dont want to say.

[R2IChennai]

Originally Posted by chennaidesi

They will always prefer a specific city which I dont want to say.

it starts with b and ends with e oh wait u..
haha

[wlbkng]

Did u mean Belgrade or Baotou?

[jaish]

Originally Posted by wlbkng

Did u mean Belgrade or Baotou?

kusumbu

[Mad 4 Madras]

Originally Posted by wlbkng

Did u mean Belgrade or Baotou?

Are these in India?

[krishnaswamy]

Originally Posted by R2IChennai

it starts with b and ends with e oh wait u..
haha

I know! it is Bodi nayakanur

[wlbkng]

Originally Posted by Mad 4 Madras

Are these in India?

He did not mention abt country anyway

[bonoslack7]

http://www.sify.com/news/finnish-ene...0mkfbfjfb.html

Finnish company Moventas, one of the largest manufacturers of wind turbine gears in the world, plans to harness India's economic potential by setting up a base in Chennai.

'India is an important market for us; therefore we have decided to improve our customer relations in the country. We have started the registration process to have our own Moventas entity in India,' Olli Valimaki, senior vice president of Moventas, told a visiting IANS correspondent.

Moventas is enthused with India's speedy recovery from the economic crisis and considers it a better market than Europe and America.

'India recovered much faster from the global meltdown than Western countries. They are having difficult times in the installation of wind energy projects,' said Valimaki.

'In the West, finances in the wind energy market are by public institutions. However, since (the economic) crisis they have become extremely careful and want to invest only in foolproof projects. They do not want to take any risk and that is why western countries are lagging behind. But India has already recovered and this market is speeding up,' he said.

'The location of our company will be at Chennai because most of the windmill customers are based in southern India. Now we are into the process of selecting an Indian as head of sales and customer services. We are expecting that our base will be set up by May or June or before the middle of this year.'

Valimaki said the name of the Indian entity will be Moventas India Private Limited. 'We are expecting a business of three million euros volume in a year from there,' he said.

A Moventas delegation is also coming to India to take part in 'Wind Power India- 2011' exhibition and seminar at Chennai during April 7-9.

'So far we have been serving our Indian clients from Finland and they have been requesting us to come to India. Moreover, this is the only way to relate to local people. The Indian market is growing very fast. The overall world market of wind power energy is expected to grow by 680 percent between the period of 2008 to 2018,' said Valimaki.

However, Valimaki refused to divulge the name of the Indian company with which Moventas is planning to tie up to start its local operations.

'Our negotiations are going on and they are almost at the final stage. Right now I cannot disclose the name. We would start with only sales, services and technical support from India office. So far no decision has been taken regarding local manufacturing,' stated Valimaki.

'Right now it would be only for local operations, at least for the first two-three years,' he said.

According to Moventas officials, around 200,000 windmills are currently operating globally. Around 15 top utility companies represent half of the base of the wind energy market and all of them are in Moventas' portfolio. The remaining half is represented by small businesses, family enterprises and farmers.

Moventas services include concept designing, engineering, testing, production, maintenance and modernisation of existing units.

The company had a revenue of 237 million euros in 2009.

[arun82]

Is there any company which has setup its R&D in solar energy

[bonoslack7]

don't think so.

[mehulkamdar]

There are several misconceptions about "green" energy which keep getting passed on and ending up in popular conversation. Several of these have been expressed here - I would like to address them and I am happy to discuss these with interested members. I do work in this field and am working on a 6 MW Solar PV project which would use a new material - Copper-Indium-Gallium-Selenium which is currently being evaluated for approval by IREDA.

1. Cost: While it is tempting to compare the relatively high price of solar or wind powered generators to those based on steam or oil based generators, this is not an accurate comparison for several reasons. For one, neither windmills nor Solar Photovoltaic generators need to draw water from water sources like the sea or fresh water for cooling. It might be tempting to consider the water as existing free of cost, but, in a time of water shortage, this publicly owned water which belongs to every citizen of India is being wasted in the case of public projects and given away free of cost in the case of private power producers who draw it. Secondly, there is the cost of fuel that is almost never taken into consideration when equipment costs are taken into consideration. if you have a coal fired powerplant (of which there are dozens in TN) you need to import coal to run the plant. There have to be dedicated berths at the various ports to unload the coal, there is the cost of transporting the coal from the country in which it is mined to the nearest port and from there to the powerplant in question. All of this adds to the costs which are not taken when just equipment costs are taken up - the wind and the sun are always going to be free. No one will pay for them.

Therefore, there is a concept called Energy Payback Time. This is the time that it takes any generating equipment to totally pay back its entire cost of manufacture, installation and running by way of the cost of the electricity that it generates. Older generation Amorphous Silicon based Solar Photovoltaic powerplants have a longer Energy Payback Time of 5 to 6 years without any equipment subsidies / incentives. The newer materials and combined PV and thermal water heaters (a technology being used in Israel) can cut the energy payback time to as little as 24 months. Land costs can be significantly reduced by placing solar PV panels on top of roofs - there are several new malls, software development centers etc and also government buildings which would be ideal places for installing these panels. No one goes to the roof of a mall and does any work there as you can guess. Multistorey apartment buildings are different, so I shall leave them out. However, bus terminii, railway stations etc could all be places for installing these panels. The White House is putting panels up in Washington DC - TN which is bathed with sunshine for more than 300 days a year (along with several other Indian states as has been rightly pointed out) can do better.

Please think about this - in 24 months, you have not only completely paid for the equipment, you will continue to gain electricity from it for the life of the equipment which is usually 15 years or longer. And, no water will be used, no fuel will need to be bought and paid increasingly higher prices for etc.

2. There are indirect benefits which are difficult to quantify. If you take a survey of people who live near any Thermal Powerplant, you will invariably find that many suffer from respiratory problems due to pollution. Often, heavy metal contamination also enters into the soil and damages it for agriculture. This does not happen with either wind or solar power. You can set a wind turbine right in the middle of a field and farm all around it. Health problems reduce the lifespan of people who may be able to do productive work for a longer time. Health problems also increase the cost of spending on medical treatments for asthma, TB etc for example. All of this is money that will not need to be spent if clean energy is focused upon.

3. There is a problem with green energy - the time of the day when it is available is fixed, for example. Secondly, for this particular reason, it cannot be relied upon to provide baseload power ie a minimum amount of power to keep consumers supplied with electricity. Anyone who lives in Chennai knows that the sea breeze sets in in the afternoon and that the early part of the day is usually listless. Similarly, there is no sunlight at night though there are stronger winds at the time. This can, however, be dealt with by using smart grid technology where the grid switches from one source of power to the other. A minimum amount of power will still need to be supplied through Thermal Powerplants or Nuclear Powerplants, though, in order to avoid disruptions. Smart grids are run by advanced software - again, ass a world leader in producing software for different applications, there is no reason why Indian engineers should not wholeheartedly take this challenge up. To be noted - this will also mean sales to other countries and that means money coming in from overseas instead of money going out of the country to be spent on foreign fuels

4. Finally, it has been noted that wherever there is a move towards the use of green energy, new people have to be trained and employed. You need engineers and technicians to install and run the equipment and to maintain it afterwards, you need accounting and audit professionals to handle the paperwork etc which is very different from that for a conventional fossil fuel powerplant and more. I do not think that any country in the world can afford to scoff at more jobs - India included

Hopefully, by the end of this year, when the powerplant that I am working on starts generating power, it will be one feather in Chennai's cap. C-I-G-S plants currently exist in less than 10 countries around the world. The company buying the plant from my suppliers plans to install one in every state capital in India within the next 3 years and they plan to permit demonstrations of the first plant to technical people as well as companies that might be interested in the technology. This forum should hear about it in the media towards the last quarter of the year. if there is no post by that time, I shall be sure to post in much more detail about it.

Best wishes, everyone!

[TShyam]

Good to have someone from renewable energy industry in the forum. There is a thread in TN forum too. You can access it at http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1289721

I have given a lot of info in the first three posts. Please review it. I have a few doubts and would be happy if you can clear it.

1. There was a news a few months back that TN is coming up with incentives for rooftop PV units. The news can be viewed here: http://www.hindu.com/2011/01/15/stor...1563781200.htm. Is it implemented? How do common man access subsidy if given? Will TNEB pay if a house or commercial unit feeds excess power into the grid? If yes what is the rate/KWh?

2. IS BIPV technology mature enough to be exploited commercially? Especially in India?

3. How much will it cost to install an 1KW rooftop unit? How much space will it need? What is the efficiency of current thin film technology PV units?

4. I know the technology is evolving but do you see the efficiency of solar units increasing dramatically in the next few years? That too thin film has only around 10% efficiency. Will it reach anywhere near crystalline silicon levels?

[mehulkamdar]

Mr T Shyam,

Thank you for your reply and for your very good posts on the TN thread. As I said in my posts, in addition to Amorphous Silicon, we now have Copper-Indium-Selenium and Copper-Indium-Gallium-Selenium PV panels though the latter are not yet approved in India by the Ministry for Non Conventional Energy from what I understand. As I do not live in India and I have not been in the country for some time, my information comes from my interactions with the company that is buying the units from my company. To answer your questions:

1. I do not know about the TN subsidy but IREDA offers subsidies for solar PVs for home use subject to a certain number of units per year and businesses are allowed depreciation of 80% in one year of operation through IREDA. These are among the best subsidies in the world. Some states offer their own subsidies but I am not aware of what they are - I shall ask my clients and post back when I have the relevant information

2. Integration of photovoltaics into a building is NOT necessary. In the USA, there are many companies which will lease you their solar panels for your use if you want to reduce your grid consumption. There are also companies which will pay you rent for your rooftop and place panels there and feed it into the mains for sale to the electric utilities. When you integrate photovoltaics into a building you are stuck at the level of efficiency of the particular panels used unless a major modification is made to remove them and replace them with more efficient ones, especially at a time when efficiency levels are being enhanced progressively through R&D.

As you point out in your post on the other thread, thin film solar PVs have reached an efficiency of around 10%. C-I-S PVs work at around 12% and C-I-G-S PVs have managed efficiencies as high as 16% in the laboratory. An Israeli company has integrated solar PVs and solar water heaters to hit overall efficiencies as high as 25% in industrial installations.

3. I would not advise a small unit at all. For individual homes, it is better to use solar water heating. The costs simply do not work out for small PV installations and it is my personal opinion that the companies trying to sell small PV units will lose money in the long term as the costs are certainly not going to benefit any clients. However if you have colonies or even larger apartment buildings, then the costing works out quite well. The 24 months energy payback times that I talked about are based on my company's 2, 6 and 10 MW powerplants. We designed these systems to fit over golf courses which closed down during the housing crisis in the USA and Europe and our current 10 MW powerplants fit over a 40 acre area. The 2 and 6 MW powerplants are proportionately smaller.

We do have what is called net zero energy housing where homes generate all of the electricity that they require, but the concept is currently very expensive and I am not sure that it can be offered in India except possibly for some very high end homes. However, in commercial buildings, there is a lot more that can be done with solar powered central airconditioning etc. Again, we can offer energy payback times of around 24 to 48 months with the systems currently available and this is minus any subsidy. My company hopes to bring these to India in the near future as well. It has not been easy though we have been talking to some software technology park promoters in Chennai and Bangalore with no success to show. You might think that companies would want to be able to use airconditioning for 300 days in a year without paying for it, but businesses have different ideas sometimes.

Thank you for your post and I hope that this has answered your queries. If there is any additional query that you or others have or if there is anything that I have left out, please let me know and I shall be happy to answer.

For those interested, the American Solar Energy Society has a magazine called Soalr Today which can be accessed free: http://www.ases.org/index.php?option...d=14&Itemid=22 If you enjoy this field, you will find the projects that they feature every month as interesting as I find them. Hopefully, some of these may give positive ideas to entrepreneurs in India to do something in this field.

Best wishes!

[madrasi7777]

One must see the areas in and around nagerkoil. I was proud of Tamilnadu when I saw what was happening. We have an over supply of wind and sun so why not take advantage of it.

Originally Posted by bonoslack7

The difference between TN and most other states is that in TN, its cheaper/almost equal to produce electricity through green energy than the normal way; also because of many windy areas and solar density in the state that facilitate it. So that is why its natural that green energy is being promoted.

TNEB will soon introduce net metering which will enable residents generate electricity with roof top solar units. The power can be used for the household, otherwise it will be fed into the grid. Residents will be charged only for the consumed power.