India plans to soon mandate state-owned utilities to add energy storage capacity to take advantage of the clean energy boom with reduced waste of generated power amid lagging storage capacity, a senior official said on Thursday.
India’s federal authorities will require the state utilities to add storage capacity, Pankaj Agarwal, secretary of the Indian Power Ministry, said at the ongoing Bharat Renewable Energy Summit.
India is working to launch additional clean energy tenders for energy storage, the official added.
Grid, flexibility, and transmission constraints amid limited battery storage forced India to curtail as much as 118.6 gigawatts (GW) of solar and wind power capacity in September, data by India’s JMK Research & Analytics showed last month.
“Key reasons for RE curtailment include demand-generation mismatches, transmission constraints, limited storage and grid flexibility, and seasonal overlaps between high renewable output and moderate demand,” JMK Research & Analytics said.
India’s record renewable power generation and solar output were overshadowed by curtailments in July and August when India experienced power availability shortages.
To address curtailments and a lack of flexibility in renewable energy sources, India plans to introduce, from July 2027, a regulation requiring developers of solar and wind energy projects to have battery storage installed at the sites.
Earlier this week, India’s federal government approved a $1.54 billion (145 billion Indian rupees) program to fund the development of 92 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of grid-scale energy storage systems. The so-called Viability Gap Funding (VGF) Scheme aims to support the development of 92 GWh of yet-to-be-commissioned energy storage capacity, including 30 GWh battery energy storage systems, 60 GWh pumped storage projects, and 2 GWh emerging storage technologies.
The support “will help improve the financial viability of these projects and accelerate the deployment of large-scale energy storage infrastructure in the country,” the government said.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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