World's largest renewable-plus-storage project takes off in India

The tariffs for these projects are lower than most thermal projects awarded.

India is set to have the world’s largest renewable-plus-storage power project after the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) announced for a 1,200MW project with firm supply of 600MW for six hours daily during peak demand hours on a day-ahead on-demand basis. According to GlobalData, it required a storage capacity (pumped hydro and battery) of at least 3,000MWh.

For this tender, Greenko emerged as the lowest bidder at weighted average tariff of 5.66 cents/kWh (INR 4.04/KWh) for 900MW capacity from its pumped storage projects with quoted peak tariff of 8.57 cents/kWh (INR 6.12/KWh). Renew Power, the second lowest bidder, won 300MW capacity at weighted average 6.02 cents/kWh (INR 4.30/kWh), with lowest ever renewable-plus-battery quoted peak tariff of 9.59 cents/KWh (INR 6.85/KWh). The tariffs are fixed for 25 years.

According to GlobalData, these renewable projects coupled with pumped storage and battery offer lowest ever peak tariff globally. These tariffs are lower than most recent thermal projects awarded in the country, even much lower than the commercial and industrial consumer tariffs in the country.

Tarun Bhutani, project manager at GlobalData noted that lithium-ion batteries provide the best option for four-hour storage in terms of cost, performance and maturity of the technology. The price of lithium-ion batteries has fallen by about 80% over the past five years, enabling their integration with solar power systems and their share in the utility-scale energy storage is growing rapidly.

Still, challenges like materials scarcity, rise in competitive demand from electric vehicle market and limitation of short-duration storage poses critical need to develop low-cost, long duration technologies in energy storage. According to Bhutani, pumped-storage hydropower and compressed-air energy storage are considered the best options.

Bhutani concluded, “The price discovery through this tender clearly projects India as a favourable market for Gigawatt-scale renewable plus storage systems and promotes forward the integration of storage technologies to provide renewable yet firm and affordable power.”