Tata Power Delhi Distribution and World Bank Group member International Finance Corporation have joined hands to assess storage capacity requirement in Tata Power-DDL’s area for ensuring sustainable and reliable power distribution and to formulate a business model for storage deployment in distribution utilities, a release from Tata Power DDL said.
The MoU was signed by Sanjay Banga, CEO, Tata Power-DDL (on the left in accompanying picture) and Vikram Kumar, Manager-Infrastructure and Natural Resources, for IFC Asia Pacific.
Over the next eight months, the two organizations will jointly conduct this first-of-its-kind study in South Asia to examine and recommend the optimum storage capacity that can be implemented for the company’s 2000-mw distribution system. Based on the results, an assessment will be made of the storage potential in other smart cities.
Tata Power-DDL and IFC will share the findings of the project with all stakeholders, including policymakers and regulatory authorities. Optimizing storage and peak load management will benefit the 1.7 million consumers in Tata Power-DDL’s area. It will also reduce the company’s cost by enabling it to buy cheaper power during off-peak hours and distributing it when the demand is higher.
In India, the way cities consume power is changing drastically as renewable energy becomes mainstream. With electric mobility poised to pick up, the demand for stable and high-quality power is expected to rise sharply. In such a scenario, a viable business model for storage in utilities will make power supply more reliable, while making the grid more resilient and enhancing disaster management capability, the release said.
By July 2019, India had 36.5 GW of wind power and 30 GW of solar power, with a plan to expand to 60 GW of wind and 100 GW of solar by 2022. During a typical day in 2022, solar power may meet up to 44 percent of the total power demand. In addition, wind capacity of 60 GW may bring about a variation of up to 8 GW in as little as 5 hours. This variability and uncertainty will require enough response capability to accommodate sudden drops in output, which can only happen with effective and viable storage systems, the release added.
(Featured photograph is for illustration only. Photo Courtesy: Fluence Energy)
