Green share in India's power generation to rise

The generation of electricity in India by conventional methods is expected to come down by 10 per cent by 2019 and by 20 per cent by 2047 due to depletion of resources.

Conventional power generation methods, therefore, will not only need to get partially replaced by non-conventional power generation methods, but efforts will also need to be made to reduce wastage of resources and power from the current procedures, said Sunil Mitra, principal secretary of the department of power and non-conventional energy of the West Bengal government, at a workshop organised by the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry on energy management.

In West Bengal, 97 per cent electricity generated came from thermal power, with 4,500 megawatt coming during peak hours and 2,200 megawatt during the non-peak, said Mitra.

Peak demand has been growing at the rate of 4.25 per cent and energy demand in general was growing at five per cent.

Mitra mentioned the rice husk gasification method currently being used by rice mills in the state which have a combined generation capacity of 22 megawatt of electricity.

This has also led to trading in carbon credit points that has so far earned the state Rs 15 crore.

Another speaker at the seminar, Biplab Kar, manager for technical services distribution at CESC Ltd, said that energy conservation potential in India has been assessed at not less than 23 per cent of the present installed capacity of 1,23,542 megawatt.

Kar said that energy conservation projects at the Budge Budge generating station of CESC had helped in annual electrical energy savings of up to Rs 3 crore while the technology upgradation needed for it was only Rs 10 lakh.

At the Titagarh generating station, energy savings was around of Rs 12 crore, while investment made for upgradation was Rs 95 lakh.

He pointed out that high plant load factor of generating stations, reduction of transmission and distribution losses, financial restructuring, rationalisation of manpower and energy efficiency improvement had contributed to the average tariff of CESC going down from Rs 4.15 per unit of power in 2003-04 to Rs 3.74 in 2006-07.

Kar mentioned the increasing importance of natural gas as a substitute for oil and coal as fuel for thermal power generators in future.