Govt working on Energy Storage Policy

As part of India's green energy drive, the government is working on an Energy Storage policy for the large-scale integration of renewable energy with India's power system. There is increasing traction for hydropower plants among Indian clean energy majors. Large storages can assist in keeping India’s power grids stable, given 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 recommend 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 aid to balance the national electricity grid. A 6 October public notice from the ministry said that the Government of India aims to bring out a comprehensive policy on energy storage in the power sector. The policy would broadly concentrate on demand management, regulatory, financial and taxation, technological factors to ramp up the execution of storage capacity driven by the need to have enhanced flexibility in the Indian power system to absorb the large scale integration of the renewable energy into the system in the following years. India aims to bring a policy to support hydro pump storage schemes with about 96 GW recognised as a potential capacity for the same. As we have reported earlier, India is on track to gain 450 GW established capacity from renewable energy by 2030. It comes when India aims to install a 14 GWh grid-scale battery storage system at the world’s largest renewable energy park at Khavda in Gujarat and aims to float tenders for the largest global tender for installing a 13 GWh grid-scale battery storage system in Ladakh. Image SourceAlso read: India on track to reach 450 GW RE capacity by 2030: Power ministry