As part of India's green energy drive, the government is working on a comprehensive Energy Storage Policy for the large-scale integration of renewable energy with India's power system, according to a public notice on October 6 from the Ministry of Power.
There is increasing traction for hydropower plants among Indian clean energy majors. Large storage can assist in keeping India’s power grids stable, given that electricity is generated intermittently from clean energy sources like solar and wind. The plan is to utilise cheap green power during off-peak hours to raise water to a height and then release it into a lower reservoir to produce electricity.The Ministry of Power has asked for suggestions concerning the formulation of a comprehensive policy framework and recommendation of other interventions to boost energy storage in the power sector.
India has touched 100 GW of established solar and wind capacity, with another 63 GW under development. The idea is to achieve 175 GW renewable energy capacity by 2022 and 450 GW by 2030. This enormous injection of electricity in the grid from sources like solar and wind needs a storage mechanism that can help balance the national electricity grid.
The proposed Energy Storage Policy would broadly concentrate on demand management, regulatory, financial and taxation aspects and technological factors to ramp up the execution of storage capacity driven by the need for enhanced flexibility in the Indian power system to absorb the large-scale integration of renewable energy into the system.
India aims to bring a policy to support hydro pump storage schemes, with about 96 GW recognised as potential capacity for the same
This comes at a time when India aims to install a 14 GW per hour grid-scale battery storage system at the world’s largest renewable energy park at Khavda in Gujarat and plans to float bids for the largest global tender to install a 13 GW per hour grid-scale battery storage system in Ladakh.
As reported earlier, India is on track to gain 450 GW established capacity from renewable energy by 2030.
