With its focus on India’s aim to achieve 40% non-fossil fuel generation capacity in the country’s power generation mix by 2030, the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) has released a draft report on the optimal generation capacity mix for the year 2029-30.

The draft is up for comments up to July 31, 2019.

In October 2016, India became the 62^nd country to ratify the Paris Agreement. The agreement requires every ratifying member country to come up with a national plan to curb carbon emissions and rising temperatures. Under this framework, India has set a goal of generating 40% of its electricity from renewable energy sources.

Optimal generation capacity mix is a study primarily aimed at finding out the least cost-optimal generation capacity mix, which may be required to meet the peak electricity demand and electrical energy requirement of the year 2029-30 in line with the 19th Electric Power Survey.

The study minimizes the total system cost of generation, including the cost of anticipated future investments while fulfilling all the technical constraints. The base year of the study has been considered as 2021-22. The installed capacity projected in the National Electricity Plan (NEP) has been taken as the input to find out the requirement of future generation capacity mix to be built up until 2029-30. The technical and financial parameters of different generation technologies have been considered as specified in the NEP.

Mercom previously reported that the CEA has estimated that the peak demand and energy requirement in the five years, 2017-2022, is likely to be 235,317 MW and 1,611 billion units, and for the five years, 2022-2027, it is expected to be 317,674 MW and 2,132 billion units. The NEP takes into account the short- and long-term demand forecast for different regions and suggests areas for generation and transmission capacity additions.

In the draft report, the cost trajectory for battery energy storage system is assumed to be reducing uniformly from ₹70 million (~$1.2 million) in 2021-22 to ₹43 million (~$0.63 million) in 2029-30 for a 4-hour battery system which also includes an additional cost of 25% due to the depth of discharge. The operation and maintenance (O&M) cost for the battery energy storage system has been considered as 2%.

The report points out that the capacity expansion for coal-based projects is not significant as compared to solar and wind capacity additions. It is projected that renewable energy sources (solar + wind) installed capacity will become 440 GW by the end of the year 2029-30, which is more than 50% of total installed capacity of 831 GW.

According to the report, the projected gross electricity generation during the year 2029- 30 is likely to be 2,508 billion units (BU) comprising 1,297 BU from thermal (coal, gas, and lignite), 887 BU from renewable energy sources, 197 BU from hydro, 101 BU from nuclear, and 26 BU from biomass.

The report projects that non-fossil fuel (solar, wind, biomass, hydro & nuclear)-based installed capacity is likely to be about 65% of the total installed capacity and non-fossil fuels will contribute around 48% of the gross electricity generation in the year 2029-30.

The report concludes that that the installed capacity by the end of 2029-30 is expected to be  8,31,502 MW which includes hydro of 64,089 MW, small hydro of 5,000 MW, hydro imports of 4,356 MW, coal worth 2,66,827 MW, gas 24,350 MW, nuclear 16,880 MW, solar 300,000 MW, wind 140,000 MW and biomass 10,000 MW along with a battery energy storage capacity of 34,000 MW/136,000 MWh.

According to Mercom’s India Solar Project Tracker, as of now, over 30 GW of solar PV projects are in operation, and over 12 GW of solar PV projects are under various stage of development.

Mercom recently reported that according to the Economic Survey 2018-19, additional investments in renewable projects up to 2022 (excluding transmission) would be about $80 billion at today’s prices and an investment of around $250 billion will be required for the period 2023-2030.