CHENNAI: The words that steered one of the largest protests in independent India — against the Kudankulam nuclear power plant between 2011 and 2014 — were perhaps this: Energy should be produced, distributed and consumed locally. Yet the AIADMK government paid no heed to the words. Even when expanding solar energy, it opted for mega solar parks owned by Adani in Kamuthi.
The present DMK government has announced setting up of solar parks in each district with an installed capacity of 5MW to 20MW. It has planned to set up 20,000MW of grid connected solar and 10,000MW with battery storage. This announcement is the first step in ‘course correction’, though the state has miles to go before realising distributed electricity generation. Smart storages and micro grids need to be developed and put into operation before that could happen.
Before getting into energy supply or production, we need to look at demand in the state. We need to value each unit (Kwh) of energy saved on a par with each unit generated. According to the TN energy department policy note 2021, about 35% of energy produced is consumed by domestic consumers, whereas both HT< industries consume about 38.8%. The statistics show that we have an enormous opportunity to improve in terms of energy efficiency.
