India RE-Hybrid Experts Forum

The Indian Power sector has seen a tremendous growth in Renewables over the last 5 years, 51 GW of RE capacity got added in the last 5 years to the Grid. With the ambitious target of 175 GW by 2022 and 450 GW by 2030, this growth story looks to remain undeterred going forward. The question here though is that will the growth trajectory of Renewables be as smooth as it has been till now. The decline in YOY growth of RE addition shows that the sector has been facing challenges and the road ahead will not be smooth. One of the prime reasons for this is the variable nature of Renewables, which decreases the Grid inertia and also increases dynamics in the grid. Thus it is much required to bring in sustainability to this growth. Hybridization of Renewables comes as a natural solution, which brings in benefits of better land utilization, making RE more dispatchable and also making the RE load curve a bit more smooth. But blending only wind and solar still has challenges as it does not take away the variability factor and also does not bring about major improvements in capacity utilization. Energy storage thus becomes essential. With the reducing cost of storage and also improvements in technology Energy storage now is competing well with other fuel sources. The recent SECI tender which was won at a tariff of INR 4.8/kWh (Renew – 300MW-RE/150MW-Storage) displayed the same.

The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), India has issued  Guidelines for Tariff Based Competitive Bidding Process for Procurement of Round-The Clock Power (RTC) from Grid Connected Renewable Energy Power Projects, complemented with Power from Coal Based Thermal Power Projects in order to provide RTC power to the DISCOMs from renewable energy sources  complemented/balanced with coal based thermal power and to facilitate renewable capacity addition, fulfilment of Renewable Purchase Obligation (RPO) requirement of DISCOM. However, a detailed discussion is needed to analyse counter effect in terms of meeting the RE targets and moving towards India’s international commitments towards achieving cleaner environment and climate policy goals. Recently SECI in its concept paper discussed about High performing Renewables, where there has been discussion of getting more utilization from Renewables, one solution to this is oversizing of RE capacity which does not look sustainable without storage of energy. We are witnessing an increase in tendering activity for RE + Storage tenders and also discussions from MNRE to encourage Storage related RE tenders in future. This webinar is conceptualized to focus on such concepts, policies, guidelines and discussions and also look into the gaps which needs to be taken care of for making this sector truly sustainable. We have an interesting combination of speakers from the Government, Policy makers, Industry leaders, consultants and market analysts to throw more light into this growing area of Power Sector.