India’s solar bounty is becoming a grid headache
India's solar energy production has been growing rapidly, but the country is struggling to manage the excess clean electricity that often goes unused. In the last 15 months, nearly 11 terawatt-hours of solar power was curtailed, enough to power around 10 million homes. Despite this excess, the country continues to rely heavily on coal for most of its electricity generation.
The main reason for this is the lack of transmission and storage infrastructure needed to accommodate the fluctuating output of wind and solar power. Building solar and wind farms alone is not enough; India also needs more transmission lines to distribute electricity across the country and batteries to store excess renewable power until it is needed. This is particularly challenging in western India, where the concentration of renewable generation has led to congested transmission lines.
Curtailment results in financial losses for clean power developers, as they are only paid for the electricity they deliver to the grid. Additionally, the inflexibility of coal plants to quickly reduce their output when solar power surges makes it difficult to manage the excess clean electricity. To address this issue, India needs to build more transmission lines, batteries, and a more flexible power system that can quickly adjust to changes in wind and solar output.
Batteries can help store solar electricity for use during peak demand periods, but the country's storage sector remains small compared to what is needed.
Written by urgent.news from The Economic Times's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
