Renewables integration in the Indian electricity grid

Collaboratiors: Vijay C.S. (PhD student at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore)

India is on an ambitious trajectory to increase the renewables generation capacity from about 50 GW in 2017 to 175 GW in 2022. This includes a target of 100 GW in solar, 60 GW in wind and 15 GW in other renewables. India already has about 50 GW of large hydroelectric plants. The 2030 Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) target of 40% renewables capacity translates to a total renewables capacity of about 300-350 GW. Inegration of a such a large share of renewables in the electricity grid is a technological, operational and policy challenge.

This project aims to build a electricity capacity expansion and dispatch model to analyse the possible challenges. Currently, the model is at a spatial disaggregation of five regional grids with a temporal resolution of one hour. The goal is to increase the spatial and temporal resolution of the model as data and computing power become available. The project is being developed using the calliope multi-scale energy modelling framework.

This project is a part of Vijay’s PhD thesis.