The Economic Times daily newspaper is available online now.

    Govt plans tenders for storage to smoothen clean energy supply

    Synopsis

    "This (intermittent power) is one of the major concerns brought up by grid operators, power companies and utilities. With solar, we have already issued the round-the-clock and the peak power tender," he said at RE Invest Friday. RE Invest is the flagship event organised by MNRE that is taking place on November 27 and November 28. The event was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday.

    wind energy agenciesAgencies
    RE Invest is the flagship event organised by MNRE that is taking place on November 27 and November 28.
    BENGALURU: In an attempt to address the intermittent problem of wind and solar power, the ministry of new and renewable energy (MNRE) is working on issuing tenders for pure storage capacity, said J.N. Swain, Managing Director of the Solar Energy Corporation of India, the nodal agency through which MNRE conducts auctions.

    "This (intermittent power) is one of the major concerns brought up by grid operators, power companies and utilities. With solar, we have already issued the round-the-clock and the peak power tender," he said at RE Invest Friday. RE Invest is the flagship event organised by MNRE that is taking place on November 27 and November 28. The event was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday.

    Swain said that the perceived conflict between solar energy and agriculture will need to be resolved. "Solar is the best suited power for agriculture -- both grid connected as well as off-grid. As farmers will require more income, they will require assured supply of power," he said.

    India possesses a huge potential of solar power with 750GW and wind power with over 695GW, noted Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog. "If these resources are materialised, India's economy would become a green energy economy and on its way to becoming a net zero emission country," he said.

    He spoke about the need for industrial decarbonation through renewable power. “Renewable energy with storage can serve as a better solution for replacement of diesel based generation which medium and small scale industries are currently using as power back-ups. This would be a game changer; a lot of the emission issues from the industry can be tackled,” he said.

    Sumant Sinha, Managing Director of Renew Power said that the pressure is on policy makers to figure out the right policies for solar manufacturing as well as for solar installation. “Because technology is evolving so fast, and pricing is going down rapidly, it is putting a special challenge on policy makers. Decisions that were taken six months ago are no longer valid,” he said. The other challenge for policy makers is to figure out a way to make solar ubiquitous across multiple sectors.

    He spoke about issues the industry is dealing with right now. “We as developers have run ourselves ragged trying to deal with execution on the ground -- acquiring land, connectivity issues, local issues -- those can be really difficult. We need to get states to open their own minds to let us execute much bigger capacities on the ground. We need to develop partnerships between the central government, state government, and us as executors on the ground.”


    (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel)
    (Catch all the Business News, Breaking News Budget 2024 News, Budget 2024 Live Coverage, Events and Latest News Updates on The Economic Times.)

    Download The Economic Times News App to get Daily Market Updates & Live Business News.

    ...more
    The Economic Times

    Stories you might be interested in