India’s record-setting annual additions of wind power capacity could double by the end of the decade, a senior executive at major wind turbine maker Suzlon Energy told Bloomberg on Thursday.
Last year, India installed a record 6.3 gigawatts (GW) of wind power generation capacity.
This year, the annual installations are set to top that record and reach 8 GW, and annual additions could then double to about 14 GW by 2030, Suzlon Energy’s executive vice chairman, Girish Tanti, told Bloomberg TV on the sidelines of the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in New Delhi.
Wind power installations have lagged behind the record solar power additions in India in recent years. But the realization that wind and solar capacity plus adjacent battery systems could boost renewable energy supply and reduce curtailments has prompted investors and developers to prefer renewable-plus-battery projects.
The battery storage deployment “changes the game altogether for India,” Tanti told Bloomberg. “It’s firm. No vagaries,” the executive added, noting that this type of electricity source wouldn’t face fuel supply issues such as a coal-fired power plant could.
India is comfortably on track to meet its goal to have 500 GW of non-fossil-fuel power capacity installed by 2030, after having just hit the 300 GW milestone, New and Renewable Energy Minister Pralhad Joshi said in August.
Solar power led the capacity installations, with a total of 164.59 GW as of the end of July, followed by wind power with 58.14 GW installed capacity, hydropower at 57.24 GW, bio-power at 11.75 GW, and nuclear power capacity at 8.78 GW. These totaled 300.5 GW on July 31, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy said in August.
Moreover, India’s authorities plan to introduce, effective July 1, 2027, a regulation requiring developers of solar and wind energy projects to have battery storage installed at the sites in a bid to better manage the renewable energy output and reduce curtailments.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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