Rs 300 cr for green energy project

An integrated renewable energy project worth Rs 300 crore to be set up with part German investment to provide electricity to over 3.5 lakh people of the Sunderbans region, SP Gon Choudhuri, director of the West Bengal Renewable Energy Development Agency (WBREDA) said today at a symposium organised by the Indo-German Chamber of Commerce on renewable energy.

"The master plan is being drafted and will be completed within two months, with the government of India to pay Rs 150 crore and the other half to be borne jointly by the state government and with grants from Germany," Gon Choudhuri explained.

WBREDA recently installed India's first wind-diesel hybrid power plant at Sagar Island and also the country's largest off-grid bio-mass gasifier power plant to electrify five villages in the Sunderbans region.

According to plans, most of the Sunderbans would get electricity by 2012, Gon Choudhuri stated.

By 2010, at least 10 per cent of Bengal's power generation should come from renewable energy, with 20 lakh people being suitable for power from renewable energy projects, he added.

Gon Choudhuri said renewable energy aided distributed generation and off-grid supply in remote rural areas where grid connection was expensive and time consuming.

Without electricity, the information technology spurt in West Bengal would never realise its full potential, he pointed out.

Martin Seissler, project manager of the renewable energy division of Deutsche Energie Agentur (DENA), heading the German delegation, said, " West Bengal has a tremendous potential in the area of renewable energy."

Besides solar energy and biomass, wind turbines could be used for small projects requiring low wind speeds specially in the coastal regions, Seissler explained.

Bangladesh had trained Gramin Bank employees to maintain solar units and micro credit organisations in Bengal could be used to help train and maintain small scale projects in rural areas, he added.

At least two or three German companies would invest in projects, Seissler said.

The German companies met Webel SL Energy Systems Ltd (WSES) as it had emerged as one of the largest exporters of solar panels in India.

WSES was keen on joint venture opportunities with German companies for manufacture of silicon wafers, S.Vasanthi, technical and marketing director of WSES, said at the meeting.

WSES exported products to Germany, United States of America and Australia and would expand into markets like Spain and France this year.

WSES sales in the last fiscal touched Rs 56 crore and was expected to rise to Rs 80 crore this fiscal.

It will increase it capacity to 10MW this fiscal and to 30MW by 2006, said Vasanthi.