: power evacuation reached a new high in this year with an average of 4,700MW being used in the grid on Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning. On Wednesday morning, wind power evacuation reached 4,997MW. It brought down consumption of power from state-owned thermal units to less than 2,000MW. Being a wind season and also because of hydro stations picking up generation, Tamil Nadu has shut many thermal units for maintenance. "In the past few days, wind power has been fluctuating. But the total demand was also less than 12,000MW due to rain in many districts. On Tuesday and Wednesday, the demand suddenly shot up and wind power generation also increased," said a senior Tangedco official. Despite wind power being infirm, Tangedco was able to meet the demand without using thermal units, as hydro generation was happening round-the-clock. "This year we have had high evacuation of hydro power. It is the cheapest source of power too. It has helped us make huge savings in power purchase as well as coal purchase, though we are yet to calculate the total savings due to hydro power generation," said the official. Indian Wind Power Association is aggrieved that Tangedco is not fully evacuating the power its members generate. The evacuation of is low partly owing to the availability of hydro power. "Fast winds are now continuous and stable. But there is a 30-40% drop in evacuation on certain days," association chairman K Kasturirangaiyan said in a letter to Tangedco chairman. The association wanted Tangedco to take reserve shutdown of thermal units when wind power is available. "The wind power forecast is very good and we want the discom to evacuate as much wind energy as possible and reduce the carbon emission," said Kasturirangaiyan. In 2017, Tangedco created a record in selling wind power to other states. The discom sold 11.938 million units to various states and earned crores as income. This year too, it will sell wind power once the demand comes down, Tangedco source said.
The use of wind power in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu is helping reduce reliance on thermal plants, with an average of 5 GW used in the grid. Evacuation peaked at 4.7 GW recently and the constant availability of cheap electricity generated by hydro power enabled demand to be met at peak times, resulting in "huge savings in power purchase as well as coal purchase", according to distributor Tangedco. However, the Indian Wind Power Association criticised Tangedco for not evacuating all generated wind energy onto the grid and reducing CO2 emissions further.