The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) has published a technology roadmap early this month, aiming at accelerating the deployment of electrical storage for renewable energy. The roadmap estimates to meet international renewable energy targets, some 150GW of battery storage and 325GW of pumped hydro storage will be needed.
IRENA’s ninth council meeting, prioritizes 14 action items across five priority areas where government and industry can work together to facilitate the development of policies on electricity storage for renewables and they are:
PRIORITY AREA 1: System Analysis for Storage
PRIORITY AREA 2: Storage in Islands and Remote Areas
PRIORITY AREA 3: Storage for Self-Consumption of Renewable Power
PRIORITY AREA 4: Storage Coupled for Renewable Power Generation
PRIORITY AREA 5: Storage in Transmission and Distribution Grids
ESI 2015 aims to deliberate all this action items this December in order to supplements Government of India’s vision to provide electricity to all by 2022.
This roadmap is the product of four stakeholder workshops involving more than 200 electricity storage experts from 50 countries, out of which one of the workshop took place at the 2nd Energy Storage India Conference at New Delhi, India in December 2014.
India’s National Storage Mission
In 2015, India announced ambitious plans for rapidly expanding wind power and solar PV deployment. India has tremendous renewable energy resources including an estimated 750 GW of solar PV and approximately 1,000 GW of wind (Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), 2014). It has already deployed a significant amount of renewables including 130 GW of hydropower, 22 GW of wind, 20 GW of bioenergy and around 2 GW of solar PV. Off-grid renewable energy capacity is estimated at around 825 MW (WB, 2014). For 2022, India has the ambition to increase its solar PV target of 20 GW to 100 GW. This means adding at least 12 GW in solar PV per year. For wind energy, India has been considering an increase from 3 GW to 10 GW per year.
‘Green Energy Corridor’, a report by PGCIL, stated that for renewable integration in power infrastructure, more than 90% of allocated funds would be used for transmission system strengthening & expansion while 5% for energy storage technologies. Despite the limited role of energy storage, MNRE is keen to understand the transformative role electricity storage can play in the grid infrastructure. MNRE has published a call for expressions of interest in energy storage projects. Based on the feedback received, it is now developing a National Storage Mission to coincide with the national missions on solar, wind and smart grid. A guiding principle for supporting them is to explore new business models for energy storage projects and ensure energy storage technologies provide grid services beyond the support for renewable integration. India Energy Storage Alliance (IESA) is working closely with all the stakeholders to create a technology neutral platform to develop this market to provide universal quality and reliable energy access.
