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Ecology & Environment
Mahesh

02/08/24 11:33 AM IST

Union Budget 2024 promised policy on pumped storage

In News
  • Budget 2024-25 promised that “a policy for promoting pumped storage projects will be brought out for electricity storage and facilitating smooth integration of the growing share of renewable energy with its variable and intermittent nature.
Storage capacity
  • India has planned to create an ambitious 500 GW of non-fossil power by 2030.
  • In around two years, from 2021 to 2023, it created some 23 GW of non-fossil generation capacity.
  • Out of 10 GW added in eight months in 2023-24, 7.5 GW were wind and solar, pointing to how renewables will account for most of the new power generation that will be added in India.
  • Actual renewable power generation has crossed 10% of the total generation and its share will only increase many times. This power will necessarily vary and is “infirm.”
  • Indian policies have laid down that all the power that renewable sources generate should be used and their curtailment should be the last priority.
  • State-of-the-art forecasting techniques have helped to predict more accurately how much will renewable power generation vary in the course of a day.
  • This has helped grid operators plan in advance how to increase or decrease power generation from other sources to provide steady power to the consumer.
  • Hydro power generation can quickly ramp up or ramp down in a matter of seconds.
  • Hydro helped to ensure there were no blackouts during the lights-off campaign during the pandemic, for instance. Gas turbines come next. Coal and nuclear need hours of notice.
India’s experience
  • India has 3.3 GW of pumped storage. Main ones are Nagarjunasagar, Kadana, Kadamparai, Panchet and Bhira.
  • Some four are under construction and two in advanced levels of planning.
  • China leads the world with 44 GW of pumped storage supporting 1,300 GW of wind and solar.
  • India would therefore need to ramp up its pumped storage capacity by several times if it wants to meet its renewable power generation targets.
  • Pumped storage is of two types: on river and off river. On-river is like any hydroelectric project supplied by a river. Existing hydro projects could become pumped storage.
  • Off-river projects are those that have two reservoirs at two different levels to which the water is pumped up or falls down to under gravity in a closed loop.
  • Abandoned mines can, for instance, be converted to such reservoirs.
  • When there is surplus power, water is pumped up from lower to upper reservoir and when power is needed the water can fall down under gravity to turn the turbines and generate power.
  • When the world’s attention turned to renewables and the problem of variable power generation, many solutions were proposed for storing energy and releasing it when wind and solar are down. Until then, no electricity generated was stored in large scale. 
Source- The Hindu

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