Techno-Economic Analysis and Planning for the Development of Large Scale Offshore Wind Farm in India

Abstract

Despite India's great potential for offshore wind energy development, no offshore wind farm exists in the country. This study aims to plan a large scale offshore wind farm in the south coastal region of India. Seven potential sites were selected for the wind resource assessment study to choose the most suitable site for offshore wind farm development. An optimally matched wind turbine was also selected for each site using the respective power curves and wind speed characteristics. Weibull shape and scale parameters were estimated using WAsP, openwind, maximum likelihood (MLH), and least square regression (LSR) algorithms. The maximum energy-carrying wind speed and the most frequent wind speed were determined using these algorithmic methods. The correlation coefficient (R2) indicated the efficiency of these methods and showed that all four methods represented wind data at all sites accurately; however, openwind was slightly better than MLH, followed by LSR and WAsP methods. The coastal site, Zone-B with RE power 6.2 M152 wind turbine, was found to be the most suitable site for developing an offshore wind farm. Furthermore, the financial analysis that included preventive maintenance cost and carbon emission analysis was also done. Results show that it is feasible to develop a 430 MW wind farm in the region, zone B, by installing seventy RE power 6.2 M152 offshore wind turbines. The proposed wind farm would provide a unit price of Rs. 6.84 per kWh with a payback period of 5.9 years and, therefore, would be substantially profitable.