South India generates around half of the country’s renewable energy power and Telangana has crossed the 10 GW demand. Wind and solar installed capacity has doubled over the past few years. These were some of the observations of speakers and experts at RenewX, a B2B renewable energy expo.
“The installed renewable solar and wind percentage is 50 percent. This is because of proactive policies and investor friendly moves,” said Uday Kiran Director, Infrastructure, Government & Healthcare, KPMG said.
While solar tariffs have decreased, there still is a possibility of replacing significant amount of power generated by means of coal with solar.
Touching upon solar and rooftop solar, Chairman and Managing Director of TSSPDCL said, “In Telangana, so far, we have connected 3,336 MW solar power to the grid. Another 470 MW is going to be commissioned by 2018. And overall target for the state is 5,000 MW by 2022. Further we are also encouraging rooftop solar.” For the ease of consumers, applications have been made online and payments.
Later, at a panel discussion, Orb Energy Pvt Limited Chief Executive Officer said that he hopes that soon lithium batteries will take over diesel gen-sets which provide power back up. He said that he is ‘excited’ by the decreasing cost of lithium batteries and saw potential in storage. Expressing optimism, speakers said that manufacturing in India is seeing an upward trend.
With storage prices decreasing and cost of power generation by means of conventional energy increasing, they said that there is scope for micro-grids.
