`India can integrate175 GW renewable energy into electricity Grid’

Speed Post News Network

New Delhi : Union Minister of State (IC) for Power, Coal, New & Renewable Energy, Piyush Goyal released the first part of the study “Pathways to Integrate 175 Gigawatts of Renewable Energy into India’s Electricity Grid” at an event organized here on June 29, 2017.  The second volume, to be released in July, takes a more in-depth look at system operations in the Western and Southern regions.

The study developed under the U.S.-India bilateral programme, “Greening the Grid”, confirms the technical and economic viability of integrating 175 Gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy into India’s power grid by 2022, and identifies future course of actions favourable to such integration. The Government of India in 2015 had set the ambitious target of adding 100 GW of solar energy and 60 GW of wind energy into the country’s energy mix, according to a PIB report.

The report resolves many questions about how India’s electricity grid can manage the variability and uncertainty of adding large amounts of renewable energy into the grid. The results demonstrate that power system balancing with 100 GW solar and 60 GW wind is achievable at 15-minute operational timescales with minimal reduction in renewable energy output, according to the release.

Some of the key operational impacts that came out of the report were: (1) largescale benefits of fuel savings and reduced emissions due to increased renewable energy production (2) existing fast-ramping infrastructure is sufficient to maintain grid balance and (3) in post-175 GW clean energy scenario, coal plants operating at part capacity will need suitable incentives for flexibility.

A multi-institutional team from India’s Power System Operation Corporation (POSOCO) and the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) produced the report using advanced weather and power system modeling under the leadership of Ministry of Power and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) with co-sponsorship from the World Bank Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP) and the 21st Century Power Partnership, according to the PIB release.

Goyal said, “It is time for the people of India to get ready and embrace the change with a ‘New Mindset’ of a ‘New Grid’ for a ‘New India’, which is ready to integrate large amount of renewable energy.”

Highlighting the importance of the study and US-India collaboration on clean energy, Michael Satin, Director of Clean Energy and Environment at USAID/India, said: “USAID has a long-standing collaboration with the Government of India in the area of energy. Energy is a key determinant of growth and India needs sustainable energy sources to continue to grow at 7-8 percent annually.”