A new study has confirmed the viability of India’s plans to install 175GW of renewable energy into the country’s grid by 2022.
The report: Greening the Grid: Pathways to Integrate 175 Gigawatts of Renewable Energy into India’s Electric Grid used ‘advanced weather and power system modelling’ to gather information that will support the planning element needed to deliver the 2022 target.
India’s Ministry of Power, USAID, the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL); Power System Operation Corporation (POSOCO) worked on the study – which was co-sponsorsed by the World Bank (ESMAP) and the 21st Century Power Partnership.
“Robust planning will be critical to achieving the renewable energy goals set by the Indian government. In parallel with institutional changes, what happens at the state level will require follow-up and investigation,” said Sushil Kumar Soonee, coauthor of the report and former CEO of Power System Operation Corporation Limited (POSOCO). Additional studies will be needed to evaluate transmission and operations planning and generator flexibility as India advances toward its goal over the next five years.”
Principal Investigator Jaquelin Cochran, a manager in NREL’s Strategic Energy Analysis Center, added: “With renewable energy auction prices at record lows, an immense amount of renewable energy growth is anticipated to be added to India’s power system. We wanted to provide a systematic way to plan for that. The results of our study can inform policy and regulatory decisions that support system flexibility and renewable energy investment in India.”
