Goa plans to set up renewable energy projects to meet power needs
To meet its power needs, the state government of Goa is planning to set up renewable energy projects in the state.
The state government of Goa plans to generate power from renewable energy projects in order to meet its power needs.
However, there are challenges facing the State, including technology and financial viability when it comes to producing energy out of new and renewable sources like storage of solar power, biogas, biomass, and small hydropower, windmills, and wave & tidal resources.
Thus, in order to evaluate the potential, availability of technologies, and financial viability for setting up power generation projects from new and renewable energy sources in the state, the State Government of Goa has approached the Union Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) to provide technical support and for carrying out a feasibility study.
According to one of the senior officials, the study will bring to light whether Goa can produce power from renewable energy sources to meet all its power needs.
The government has proposed producing maximum possible energy from the state’s renewable energy sources and wishes to evaluate the ability of the state to produce electricity from sources such as solar, wind, hydro, biomass, wave and tidal, and storage of solar energy.
During the daytime, Goa needs approximately 540 MW of power and from 6 pm to 11 pm – that is the peak hours, the requirement is around 640 MW.
Currently, Goa is able to generate between 80 MW to 282 MW through waste, to heat recovery of boilers M/S. Vedanta and M/S. Goa Sponge and Power Ltd., while the remaining power is drawn from the national grid including electricity through thermal along with renewable sources. While in the field of solid waste management approximately 0.37 MW of power is produced from biogas.
To promote solar power in the state, a 50% subsidy on the benchmark cost was notified by the government in its solar policy. However, the state has so far been able to achieve installations of about 15MW of solar power. On the other hand, the National Institute of Wind Energy has mapped the potential for wind power generation in Goa.
In context to power and energy, the State Government of Goa has two main objectives at hand, currently. While on one hand, there is an urgent need to meet ever-growing power demands in the state, on the other, it also has to progressively increase the renewables share in the energy – mix of the state.
This way the state government will not only be able to achieve the overall energy security but will also be able to meet the Renewable Purchase Obligation (RPO) targets set by the appropriate authorities from time to time.
