Solar plus Storage in India

While solar power is making all the headlines today with costs falling far below that of coal and gas based power plants, storage will soon become a major force also. While solar power costs are low, fossil fuel capacity cannot be done away with as solar power is only generated during daytime hours requiring backup capacity when the sun does not shine. However, battery costs have fallen by 80% in the last 7 years and expected to fall by another 40-50% in the next 5 years. This will make solar plus storage prices competitive with grid prices soon.

While India currently does not face issues with grid integration of solar energy as the solar power capacity is barely 4% of the overall generation capacity in India, it soon will have a problem as tens of gigawatts of solar power hit the grid. Given India’s poor transmission and distribution infrastructure, this will become a major challenge. However, energy storage is the solution as its costs are becoming cheaper by the day. Large scale lithium batters are already being deployed in California and Australia to take care of the intermittency problems.

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India’s state of Andhra Pradesh is deploying two projects of 5 MW capacity of solar on a pilot mode and the power generated will be utilized for agricultural requirements.

India’s energy problems will soon have a solution as solar plus storage in the future could be supplied as low as INR 4/kWh, leading to a massive impetus for the growth of the economy. India will be able to supply power cheaply to more than 200 million citizens who do not have access to modern electricity besides raising its extremely low per capita power consumption.