India’s first offshore wind energy project to come up off Tamil Nadu coast

According to media reports National Institute of Wind Energy (NIWE), the government body will soon issue India’s first tender for sea-bed leasing for offshore wind projects. The tender will be for four blocks of sea-bed in the Gulf of Mannar, off the coast of southern Tamil Nadu, each of which can accommodate 1 GW of wind power plants. However, it will take up to seven years to generate electricity from this project. The reports state that the bidding process involving NIWE and Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) will take about three years to come to the final agreement for starting the construction activities. Quoting the Chairman of NIWE the reports continue that the NIWE had put up 74 masts covering the entire coast of India to measure wind speeds. It has found that the southern coast of Tamil Nadu, for which the first tender is to come, has wind speeds of 9-10 meters per second.