Tamil Nadu - Nagercoil   

University gets 1.5 kw wind turbine facility

Nagercoil: A model project of a wind turbine was inaugurated by Christudas Gandhi, Chairman of Tamil Nadu Energy Development Agency, on Saturday.

According to him, it was south Tamil Nadu’s first small wind turbine at Noorul Islam University (NIU) campus situated at Kumaracoil in Kanyakumari district. The 1.5 kw turbine has the capacity to power 20 street lights on campus for 12 hours a day resulting in an emission reduction of 1,500 kg of carbon-di-oxide a year. Electricity generated in the wind turbine was stored in batteries which were connected to electrical loads through an inverter.

A specially procured automatic changeover switch will automatically connect the loads to grid power if the batteries were short of energy thus providing uninterrupted power to the consumer. This wind project helped in increasing the research interest and awareness among members of the academic community and also functions as an educational tool. With battery and turbine costs falling every year and the government announcing increasing subsidies, it’s obvious that soon small wind turbines could be seen installed at homes and small businesses functioning as a stand alone power source. More that 50,000 small scale wind turbines were used at homes and small businesses in foreign countries but in India the numbers were yet to catch up, he said.

The Rs. 3.5-lakh wind turbine project was only a part of a larger plan to build a modern Renewable Energy Park at NIU campus. The park was scheduled for commissioning during the second half of 2010 and would contain indigenously designed prototypes of Foot Powered Pump, Foot Powered Battery Charger, Low Speed Reciprocating Wind Turbine, Wind Powered Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES), Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS), Parabolic Trough Solar Thermal Plant (10 kw), an energy saving street lighting system, altitude based air conditioning, human powered car and other energy saving and pollution reducing technologies.

The inauguration was followed by a presentation by V. S. Praveen (Director – Renewable Energy) on the status of the renewable energy research undertaken at NIU.

The Chancellor, Majeed Khan, while speaking about the status of wind power in the State, said that of the 1,21,188 mw installed wind power generation capacity in the world (by 2008), India’s share was 9,587 mw. India held the fifth place only behind US, Germany, Spain and China. In India, Tamil Nadu alone contributed a share of 4,133 mw. If Tamil Nadu would have been a country, it would be ranked sixth in the world in terms of the installed capacity. Kanyakumari district had the highest wind speeds recorded in the State and NIU was the only university closest to this corridor, he added.

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