News

Quantum Leap in Wind Power Development in Asia and the Pacific (QLW) commissioned three wind measurement met-masts in Sri Lanka in early 2015.  QLW's Sri Lanka project consists of detailed mapping of wind resource in the northern regions of the country. Three new wind measuring stations were installed in Pooneryn (80m height), Jaffna (60m height) and Kokkilai (60m height) and this ground-based wind data is now available for general public use.

Data is available at:  http://www.energy.gov.lk/sub_pgs/energy_renewable_%20quantum-leap-wind.html.

Pramod Jain is the lead consultant on QLW.

Work done by Innovative Wind Energy, Inc was featured at "Small Business Openhouse" event.  The wind resource assessment and grid integration work done by IWE as a subcontractor to Tetra Tech in Indonesia for the USAID Indonesia Clean Energy Development project is highlighted.

At the Asia Clean Energy Forum 2015, ADB, Manila, presented this topic. High penetration of RE requires the following:

a. Identified reserve power sources that can do load following on the net load (=load minus variable generation)

b. Some amount storage to the grid for primary frequency response and if required load shifting/peak shaving

c. For higher stability, storage can provide “bridge energy” to allow cold start of diesel generators in response to disturbances

d. Hybrid controllers that manage wind, solar, storage, diesel plants

e. High speed communications between the generation and storage locations

Wind and Rooftop Solar PV tariff work was initiated in response to a request from the Government of Indonesia’s Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources (MEMR) to develop a new tariff regime for wind power and explore the possibility of a solar PV rooftop program in Indonesia. This report is based on analysis and stakeholder consultations conducted from October 2014 to February 2015.  

The feed-in tariffs were determined for Java/Bali, Sulawesi and Eastern Islands based on a "benefits" of wind and rooftop solar to Indonesia approach as opposed to the traditional "production-cost" approach.

This study was led by Peter Meier (Economist, Consultant, ADB) and a team comprised of Pramod Jain (Wind Technology Specialist, Consultant, ADB), Paul Rodden (Solar PV Specialist, Consultant, ADB), Djoko Prasetijo (Power Systems Engineer, Consultant, ADB) and Berliana Yusuf (Power Systems Analyst, Consultant) with additional contributions from Agung Hariyanto (Power Systems Modeling Specialist, Consultant, ADB). Pradeep Tharakan (Senior Climate Change Specialist, ADB) directed the study and Maura Lillis (Consultant, ADB) provided additional assistance. Funding for this work was provided by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) through the Sustainable Infrastructure Assistance Program (SIAP), administered by the ADB (TA-8484).

Final reports may be found at:  http://i-windenergy.com/content/wind-tariff-and-rooftop-solar-pv-tariff-report-indonesia.  

Presented results of study for RE integration in Sumba with Wind Energy, Battery Storage and Flywheel Storage.  Conducted training and site visit to Sumba.

IWE has been appointed consultant for Winrock’s project with the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) for the Indonesia Clean Energy – Integrated Deployment (SERIG) Project.  IWE will provide wind resource assessment, grid integration and wind project deployment consulting services.

ADB has published "Policy Enablers for Wind Energy Markets" by Bo An and Pramod Jain, as part of Sustainable Development Working Papers series.  Paper is available at: http://www.adb.org/publications/policy-enablers-new-wind-energy-markets.

The focus of this publication is on wind energy policies that can support sustained development of wind power in emerging wind energy markets.  The policies are based on the work done by the Quantum Leap in Wind Power Development for Asia and the Pacific (QLW).  The focus of QLW is on three countries—Mongolia, Philippines and Sri Lanka.  The success and failures of wind energy policies in the three countries are analyzed in this report and form the basis for the recommendations.  A wind energy policy framework is proposed for the emerging wind energy markets.  The components of the policy are:

• Incentives, which play a central role in policy.  An effective policy should balance supply-side and demand-side incentives.  Often the focus is on supply-side incentives like feed-in tariff (FiT) with standardized power purchase agreement (SPPA).  In most cases, policies contain weak demand-side incentives and often their implementation is ignored.
• Grid integration policy.  SPPA is accompanied with “guaranteed interconnection” and “priority dispatch” for wind power plants.  This is insufficient.  Experience has shown that grid can be one of the primary bottlenecks to wind power development.  Therefore, grid integration is a vital component of policy and it must be based on an integrated power systems study of the network with various wind penetration scenarios.  Such a study would assesses the current capabilities of the grid and the upgrades required to transmission, substations, ancillary services, existing generators and dispatching process.
• Wind exploitation policy.  Identification of wind corridors or preferred wind project zones, creation of long-term wind measurement campaigns and regular update of wind resource maps are policies that support reduction of lead time and cost of wind power installations in emerging wind markets. 
• Licensing guidelines.  One-stop shop that coordinates all the licensing, approvals and permits is a policy that can attract investors to the wind industry.
• Public awareness and human resource development.  Proactive public awareness policies can significantly reduce opposition of wind farms while proactive human resource development policies can increase the amount of work done by in-country personnel thereby increasing the benefits realized by country’s investment in wind energy.

Three met-towers for wind measurement were installed in Sri Lanka as part of Quantum Leap in Wind program of the Asian Development Bank at:

1. Poonaryn
2. Poonalai in Jaffna
3. Kokilai beach

Two met-towers for wind measurement were installed in Mongolia as part of Quantum Leap in Wind program of the Asian Development Bank at:

1. Ulaan Uul in Erdene Soum, Dornogobi aimag
2. Tsaidam Nuur in Sukhbaatar Aimag

These two permanent met-masts will enable more accurate mapping of wind resources in Mongolia.

Pramod Jain is a consultant on ADB's technical assistance on determining tariff for wind energy and rooftop solar.  Activities include: Recommend tariff and incentives for wind energy and solar PV rooftop for both utility- and small-scale; conduct consultations with all stakeholders including government, developers, utility and others; advice on scaling up renewable energy; tradeoff of various sources of renewable energy.

Presentation on "Experiences from the Emerging Wind Energy Markets."  In the emerging wind energy markets there is a strong desire to move to clean energy solutions, but a variety of challenges have slowed progress.  Asian Development Bank’s Quantum Leap in Wind Power Development for Asia and the Pacific (ADB/QLW) program has been working in Mongolia, Philippines and Sri Lanka for about five years.  The key lessons from the ADB/QLW project will be presented along three dimensions:  Wind energy policy, wind resource assessment and grid integration.

The Asian Development Bank released a publication "Guidelines for Wind Resource Assessment: Best Practices for Countries Initiating Wind Development".  Pramod Jain is the lead author. It may be downloaded from:

http://www.adb.org/publications/guidelines-wind-resource-assessment-best-practices-countries-initiating-wind-dev

Wind Resource Assessment (WRA) is a pivotal step in the development phase of a wind project. Even if the wind resource is sufficient for a viable project, the difference between a bankable and non-bankable WRA is the amount of due diligence exercised during the performance of wind measurement and wind flow modeling to compute AEP. With respect to due diligence, financiers look for efforts by developers to reduce uncertainty during the WRA and the ability of developers to estimate the remaining uncertainty.

Based on the author’s experiences in countries with emerging wind energy markets, a large fraction of developers (i) do not conduct WRAs with sufficient due diligence and (ii) do not adequately understand the concept of uncertainty and its implications on the bankability of a WRA. There are various reasons: ignorance about requirements of bankable WRAs and/or lack of funds to invest in the development activity.

Key policy support required for WRAs are the following:

(i)   Rigorous licensing preconditions for wind farms, with clearly stated requirements and checklist for WRAs, with an intent to inform developers upfront about the quality of bankable WRAs.

(ii)   Low-cost financing or grants for qualified wind energy developers to perform WRAs.

(iii)  Long-term quality wind measurement campaign in order to: collect reference data, which will reduce uncertainty; and map the wind resources to a greater level of detail in areas with promising wind resources.

(iv)  Capacity building to transfer knowledge about best practices of WRAs.