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Windmills Are Great Energy Savers But Only The Rich Can Afford Them ……..Pronoti Datta | TNN
Mumbai: Lords building in Navi Mumbai presents a curious sight. Perched atop its terrace are three windmills, their blades rotating languidly in the breeze. Installed by the buildings developers, the Parth Group, the windmills have been powering the blocks common areas, garden and parking lot for over a year, saving it a substantial electricity bill and the environment a hefty dose of carbon dioxide. A supervisor with the company, Mansukhbhai Patel, says that necessity prompted this ecologically sensitive decision. The suburb, he points out, suffers at least four hours of power cuts every day. In Mumbai, windmills are most productive from May to September when the south west monsoons whip the city.
Lords is one of a small group of buildings that are tackling loadshedding with green technologies. Mangalmoorti Apartments in Panvel and Thanes upcoming Mahavir Millennium have also had windmills installed to generate electricity for their common areas. In Pune, a 14-storied apartment block called Orange County thats yet to be built will have wind energy powering the lights in its common areas as well as two tubelights and two fans in each of its 36 flats.
The company responsible for setting up windmills in all four buildings is Supernova Technologies. Supernova makes hybrid models that come attached with solar panels and cost roughly Rs 50,000 per unit of electricity generated. Since India is not a particularly windy nation, general manager Sunil Tongay says the solar panels are essential as they kick into action when wind speeds drop. Hybridisation makes sense, says Rangan Banerji, a professor of engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Powai. These are small machines than can capture low wind speed. When the wind is low, the solar (energy output) is higher.
In the five years that it has been around, Supernova has completed over 80 projects mainly in Maharashtra and Gujarat. Building societies arent the only ones to realise that the answer to energy woes is blowing in the wind. Among Supernovas customers are a few individuals as well. One of them is Harshal Agarwal, who uses a 1.4 kilowatt windmill to power his chartered accountancy firm in Dadar. His seven-monthold windmill generates between ten and 15 units of electricity a day depending on the weather and runs computers, fans and lights. Only his air conditioners run on regular electricity. Tongay estimates that if the windmill produces ten units of electricity a day, Agarwal saves the money he would spend on at least 300 units of electricity a month. And since one unit is equivalent to one kilo of carbon dioxide, Tongay says, Agarwal prevents 300 kilos of the harmful gas from polluting the environment.
The figures might sound impressive, Agarwal says, but the cost of installing a windmill is difficult to recover despite the amount saved by way of low electricity bills. He invested Rs 9 lakh on his windmill, which some madness moved him to acquire. His motive was 100 per cent environmental, he says, adding that if he wanted to save money, he wouldve put nine lakhs into a fixed deposit and paid his electricity bills from the interest earned. However, with the cost of the electricity increasing steadily every year, he says, his investment will make better financial sense several years down the line.
On the other hand, engineer Rajesh Ladhad is more interested in an uninterrupted supply of electricity than recovering the three-and-a-half lakhs he spent on his windmill. A resident of Lords, he owns one of the three windmills on the building. It powers all his electrical appliances apart from his air conditioners, geysers and the refrigerator. As a result, his monthly electricity bill is a reasonable Rs 700. He has only one complaint. There has to be support from the government of India (for renewable energy), he says.
Tongay couldnt agree more. At present only rich people and businessmen can buy windmills, he says lamenting the lack of government subsidies for commercial windmill production. According to Maharashtra Energy Development Agency project executive Vinod Shirsat, in 2007 the central government offered subsidies of Rs 2 lakh per kilowatt or 75 per cent of the factory cost of a windmill to government organisations and non-profit bodies. But individual users were only given an 80 per cent exemption on the tax charged. Tongay is however optimistic about eco-friendly technologies becoming a trend, in which case one can look forward to a skyline salted with whirring windmills.