Govt eyes 14 GWh battery storage system in Kutch
India is planning to set up a 14 gigawatt-hour (GWh) 14 gigawatt-hour grid-scale battery storage system at Khavda in Gujarat, which is being developed as home to the world’s largest renewable energy park. This will be in addition to another 13 GWh grid-scale battery storage system in Ladakh, according to renewable energy and power minister Raj Kumar Singh. The strategic push will make India’s grid-scale battery storage programme one of the largest in the world, he said. The Khavda renewable energy park in Kutch will be the world’s largest and will finally generate 30 GW of clean energy. Spread over 72,600 hectares, it will need Rs1.5 trillion investment. The foundation stone of the park was laid by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in December 2020. Large battery storages can help keep India’s power grids stable, given electricity is produced intermittently from clean energy sources such as solar and wind. 1GWh (1,000-MWh) of battery capacity is sufficient to power 1 million homes for an hour and around 30,000 electric cars.
Grid connected battery energy storage system (BESS) is a technology option that can accommodate high share of renewable energy and contribute to grid stability. India’s proposed target of 500 GW (gigawatts) of renewable energy (RE) capacity by 2030 requires that intermittent solar is paired with BESS to supply power day and night and through summer, winter and monsoon. BESS is projected as the most suitable option for India because it requires short run flexibility that will align peak solar generation in the middle of the day with evening peak demand. The International Energy Agency (IEA) expects India to have about 140 GW of battery storage by 2040, the largest in any country. The government estimates that India will require 27 GW of grid‐connected BESS by 2030. A more recent academic study estimates that India will require 63GW/252 GWh (gigawatt hour) BESS to achieve the goal of 500 GW of solar energy generation capacity.
India got its first grid-scale advanced lithium-ion battery storage system in 2019 when a 10 MW (megawatt) / 10 MWh (megawatt hour) system offering one hour storage was deployed on Tata Power distribution networks in Delhi. The project by AES and Mitsubishi with energy storage technology and integration services provider Fluence, itself a joint venture of Siemens and AES initiated the process of investigating the optimal deployment of energy storage for the distribution of Tata Power’s 2,000 MW electricity network. In March 2021, Tata Power in collaboration with lithium-ion battery and storage company Nexcharge installed a 150 KW (kilowatt)/528 kWh (kilowatt hour) battery storage system offering six hours storage to improve the supply reliability at the distribution level and reduce peak load on its distribution transformers.
The BESS systems designed to charge during the off-peak hours and discharge the power during peak hours, are expected to support the distribution transformers to manage peak load, regulate voltage, improve power factor, regulate frequency, settle deviations, support grid stabilisation, prevent overload of power transformer, manage reactive power and defer CAPEX (capital expenditure). More recently Tata Power Solar Systems received a letter of award from the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) of an INR 9.45 billion (US $126 million) 100 MW solar project with a 120 MWh battery in Chhattisgarh. It is too early to assess the success of these initiatives but developments in industrialised countries offer some lessons.
According to the Central Electricity Authority, there will be a need for 27GW of grid-scale battery energy storage systems by 2030 with four hours of storage. Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd has also announced plans to set up an advanced energy storage Giga factory. India recently unveiled its R18,100 crore production linked incentive scheme for developing a battery storage ecosystem that involves setting up 55-GWh manufacturing capacity for advanced chemistry cell batteries. The Ladakh plan involves setting up 10 GW of large green energy capacity in the strategic region comprising solar and wind parks and using these large battery units to store that electricity to supply to the rest of the country. Ladakh, Thar, Rann of Kutch, Lahaul and Spiti have the potential to generate 315.7GW of solar and wind power and will require investments of Rs 43.7 trillion over the next 30 years to 2050, according to a study conducted by the state-owned Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd. “We have resources available with us. We have plentiful sun. We have plentiful wind. We will need storage, and we will get there,” Singh said.
