India Needs Enough Storage Capacities for its Ambitious Renewable Energy Push

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India, a signatory to the Paris agreement, has set an ambitious renewable energy target of 175 GW by 2022, of which 100 GW is expected to come from solar.

The country that has a long-term strategy is to increase its solar energy capacities by about ten folds by the year 2040. This doesn’t indicate the stoppage of coal. It will in its stead continue to cater to power demand which is likely to increase by around 5-6% year-on-year until 2030.

In essence, this will mean that there may be a marginal decrease in the usage of coal for electricity generation even with increased penetration of renewable energy.

This is so since there are many challenges in integrating solar systems with grids directly.

As solar energy is a sporadic source of electricity, it has power and voltage fluctuations, storing excess solar capacity in storage devices alone will help in smoothening of the fluctuations and lend flexibility to the grid.

Estimations show that if India has to achieve 75% of its 100 GW solar capacity by 2022 this can be possible only when the country develops a power storage capacity of 20-30 GW.

Presently, in India, pumped hydro storage (PHS) is the only known technology for storing energy in the GW range. With PHS technology energy is stored in form of water in an upper reservoir and pumped from another reservoir from a lower level.

When electricity demand increases, power is generated by enabling the stored water to run turbines as in conventional hydropower stations. Three years ago, in 2017, the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) had estimated that there’re potentially 96 GW of PHS capacities at 63 sites throughout India. Only 2.6 GW of PHS is operational and 3.1 GW is under construction.

Apart from PHS, batteries are a popular form of device for storing electricity. In India, lead-acid batteries with power capacities in the range of 180 W/kg are used for electric vehicles. So if 10 GW is stored using PHS technology, another 10 - 20 GW can be stored in batteries, there are no other options, to serve India’s needs millions of battery units will be needed.

The reality is dawning upon business establishments. Last year Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) invited bids for setting up storage devices for 1.2 GW of solar energy and connect solar plants to the transmission system.

Using storage capacities bodes well in off-grid and min-grid systems as they ensure round-the-clock power supply. Affordable batteries reduce the cost of e-vehicles substantially creating traction in vehicle sales. Rooftop solar will also benefit from storage as it will allow users to consume more of the power generated even when placing more solar systems on the grid without extra spending for expansion.

There are numerous other advantages such as consumers can avoid high tariffs of the evening peak hours, improve the management of distribution networks, reduce grid congestions, improve grid balancing, control voltage variations, etc.

In the recent past, the government has strived to build India’s battery storage capacity. It approved the setting up of a National Mission on Transformative Mobility and Battery Storage, to drive clean, connected, shared, sustainable and holistic mobility initiatives.

The government also brought forth the phased manufacturing programme (PMP), valid for 5 years till 2024, to support setting up of a few large-scale, export-competitive integrated batteries and cell-manufacturing Giga plants in India.

Although these initiatives by the government are commendable there is a larger concern in the market as many analysts feel that solar energy expansion in India could be thwarted by the limitations of a grid-scale energy storage infrastructure. Even solar energy companies are not fully concentrating on building energy storage infrastructure while bidding for solar energy projects.

Setting up additional infrastructure will come at increased cost and then it will lose its competitive advantage to electricity generated from coal-fired power plants and perhaps companies are wary to take it up and are seeking subsidies. India is setting up battery gigafactories that are concentrated on lithium-ion with an eye on e-vehicles. For the government to achieve its target, the solar sector needs to come up with suitable storage devices, otherwise, the government aims to supplant coal with renewable energy that could fall flat.