Utility-level storage is the key to energy efficiency

Society should take initiatives to shift towards a sustainable and clean future through energy conservation and efficient recycling solutions, says Shirish Garud, Director – Renewable Energy Technology, TERI. India plans to conserve 820 gigawatts of electricity producing capacity by 2030.

How do you see this in practice?
The availability of affordable and reliable electricity has been an important requirement for the development of any country. In recent decades, India has improved in this area, with connectivity rising and electrical shortages
decreasing. To make it sustainable and achieve India’s climate targets, decarbonising energy generation is a major problem. With the aim of generating 175 GW of renewable capacity in 2022 and 450 GW of renewable capacity by 2030, India has begun one of the world’s most ambitious renewable energy programmes. A collaborative platform between
important stakeholders and a comprehensive, in-depth analysis adapted to the conditions of the Indian energy sector are required for the achievement of this goal. The Energy Transitions Commission plans to double it in the next six to eight years, so it is ambitious, but it is entirely dependent on economic growth as well as demand in the residential sector, which is undoubtedly growing due to changing lifestyles in which people seek digitalisation and modern technologies such as electrical gadgets, but a major demand should come from the industrial and commercial or building sector.

What techniques are required to maintain power plant efficiency and to meet the ever-increasing energy demand?
The power plants are powerful, the control of power plants is going to be an important challenge. There are two major challenges is more and more renewables coming in because 60 gigawatts of coal power might be added in the next eight years, and the other is that the majority of power will come from renewables. This variable renewable power will have to be tackled with a battery or other storage technologies like pumped hydro storage or gravity storage or some other new technologies. Another thing, the coal power plants will have advanced control mechanisms for quick ramping. Furthermore, they can also be achieved through power when the government is trying to restart the gas pipelines with a follow-up capacity of about 25 Giga or 25 / 26k or aspirants stagnant because of the high cost of debt. Multiple strategies will be required to plan and operations need to be modernised with advanced metering and more monitoring and control systems, SCADA systems. It is challenging, but at the same time we are capable of overcoming it.

What difficulties do utilities face in maintaining energy efficiency and protecting power plants?
Utilities have their own power-generating units, but they are essential for buying power and distributing it among consumers. The consumer demands more and more renewables coming into the picture or rooftops coming into the picture, which is again going to be limited in a variable. Utilities must maintain their scheduling or DSN
requirements to control the frequency. So, some challenges are going to be there for utilities as well, as utility-level storage is going to play an important role.

What kind of regularity and financial support can help to improve and protect our energy infrastructure?
We have to have good regulations to incorporate storage in these systems. Some states have started some activity in that respect, but there are major challenges because the storage costs are very high and storage is not generating electricity. It is consuming electricity because of its inherent efficiency. So, you have some charging, and discharging efficiencies. So, storage, is going to have an impact on the cost of electricity which is passed
through salt storage and re-supplied. Accordingly that impact needs to be extremely low tariff is not disturbed
very much, and also that is one major challenge for regulators because, so far, there are hints that sunset regulators have refused to discount to invest in storage, and infrastructure, but that is something which needs to be looked into very carefully because storage can give the service, but it is also important to see the cost of storage and its impact on overall electricity costs are minimised.

What are the most recent and upcoming technologies for the next generation of power generation?
Currently, one is looking at advanced solar PV and wind turbines, including offshore wind turbines with better
control, responding to the wind regime and glowering high-efficiency solar modules and cells, and highly
sophisticated inverters for the management of lead. These are major technologies which will have an impact on our future generations’. Many are working on innovations and we are working on some advanced battery storage technology for supporting substation operations. This is with the Department of Science and Technology funded project under
Mission Innovation Program strategic partners, where we are also looking at mobile storage systems. We have also developed and implemented a couple of demonstration projects for grid-integrated storage and distribution in Delhi and we are monitoring the performance.