Affordable electricity essential for economic development

N Janaiah, VC & MD Telangana State Renewable Energy Development Corporation Limited, Government of Telangana

“ The wind potential of 40-65 times higher is possible with new scale and technologies”

India is the most exciting power market in the world, particularly for renewable sector, according to N Janaiah, VC & MD of Telangana State Renewable Energy Development Corporation Limited, Government of Telangana.

Recent developments in energy sector
The last four years have been path-breaking, if you compare it to the rate of progress in the previous 48 years. In the 48 years before 2014, the pace of capacity addition in generation was about 4,800 MW a year. In the 48 months of this Telangana Government, the pace of capacity addition was 24,000 MW a year. That’s 4.8 times. We added 1 lakh MW, i.e. 2.44 lakh MW to 3.44 lakh MW.” Total installed capacity of power stations in India stood at 344.78 Gigawatt (GW) as of August 2018 of which 70GW is from renewable energy.

Economic development and affordable electricity
Energy is an important input for economic development and power sector is an indispensible infrastructure in any economy for which the electrification of energy demand in all regions and sectors is the prime importance. Providing adequate and affordable electric power is essential for economic development.

Impact of competitive bidding
In the past, the wind developers had only the option of installing the power and signing the PPA for ERC approved tariffs. But, in the recent past, the implementation of competitive bidding has helped the developers with pre conditions, has given the clarity for their ROI and also the best lowest tariff is discovered through this mechanism,

India’s ambitions in renewable energy sector

India’s renewable energy target
Government of India’s Renewable Energy target of 175 GW by 2022 breakup is as follows

• Wind (utility-scale – Planned for 2022 -60 GW)
• Wind (utility-scale – Commissioned as on September 30, 2018 — 34.29 GW)
• The balance 29.71 GW needs to be achieved by 2022. And this milestone will be met well in time based on the present developments and commitments for GOI and respective state governments.

Central government’s policies and initiatives for wind
The Central and State government’s wind policy has been supportive, and more recently, a wider set of actions including incentives, infrastructure and investment promotions were taken up. This makes wind energy attractive to power utilities that are contracting new long-term capacity, and in addition, this avoids them the burden of take-or-pay contracts and fuel risk.

The resource potential of India is now recognised as substantially higher than earlier. Furthermore, new initiatives exploring offshore wind power has led the wind energy tariffs to come down.