INDIA'S PLAN FOR CLEAN ENERGY

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POLICIES & AMBITIONS

GOALS

India has ambitious goals of 100 total GW of installed capacity for solar PV distributed resources. One of the major goals of India these days is to improve the flexibility of the grid, and distributed resources are an excellent means to do so. An example of this is the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Jyoti Yojana scheme of 2015, which was launched to support the adoption of decentralized distributed electricity (i.e. solar PV) in rural India. Net metering policies are also being implemented in 28 different states within India, which could help improve the speed at which distributed solar is deployed.

DISTRIBUTED GENERATION

Distributed energy generation resources are expected to grow significantly in the coming decades in India - along with distributed battery storage, demand response and EVs - because of the advantages they offer individual consumers and the bulk power system in regard to system flexibility. Grid flexibility is a priority due to India’s history of unsteady energy security, and distributed resources may help remedy this by offering more widespread electric generation across the land, thus providing energy security to a wider audience.

Although only 2.14 GW of distributed solar has been installed - mainly due to the small transaction size of small scale solar, which serves as a barrier to entry - there is hope for this market to expand and meet its ambitious goals.

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DEMAND RESPONSE

Policymakers in India believe that demand response is another important measure in making their grid more flexible and increasing energy security. There must be a shift from power system flexibility to all sources of flexibility (renewable generation, grids, storage, demand response programs, etc.). Policymakers in India believe that robust demand response programs can serve as a medium-to-long term solution for grid flexibility since demand response, by nature, mitigates high energy demand.

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Demand response and renewable energy are intertwined because in the winter, intermittent renewables like solar do not perform well, and thus do not generate enough electricity to meet demand sometimes. So, robust demand response can help alleviate some of the pressure in demand that intermittent resources cause. India serves as an excellent setting for robust demand response programs. This is because India’s energy consumers are used to frequent power supply cuts due to high demand and low supply, so this creates good conditions for demand response programs from industrial, commercial and household consumers.

There is a difference between demand response and demand side management. Demand side management is the involuntary decreased usage of electricity by participants. In other words, the grid operators will force large demanders of energy to stop demanding energy for some time in order to prevent widespread blackouts. India has a history of utilizing this measure due to frequent mismatches between supply and demand. Demand response is very similar to demand side management, only demand response is voluntary for participants. Demand response participants in India can either receive cost savings on their retail electricity cost via contracts, or they can receive wholesale market revenue via payments from the grid operators.

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RETAIL PRICING

can serve as an excellent price signal for renewable energy resources.

NET METERING

Net metering allows these resources to offer their excess energy production back to the grid, thus offsetting some of their costs (this is especially true in households).
Retail pricing can help with the increase of distributed energy resources, such as solar, due to net metering programs as mentioned above.

However, net metering alone cannot address the question of optimal system integration of these distributed resources; all it serves as is incentive to put in distributed solar in the first place.

RETAIL PRICING

Retail pricing can also aid in the implementation of demand response programs via sending market signals.
Offering time of use/time of day pricing, industrial and commercial consumers will know when is best to purchase their electricity.

For example, consumers may elect to reduce energy consumption (a sort of demand response) when electricity prices are high, and increase consumption when prices are low.

India’s policymakers believe that visibility of retail electricity prices may aid in the development of renewables; distributed resources will benefit, as will demand response programs which relieve some pressure applied by intermittent renewable energy resources.
India’s residential retail electricity prices are among the highest in the world.
Policymakers recognize that there are problems with current retail pricing.
To increase demand flexibility and the implementation of more renewable resources, India will need further changes to retail pricing.

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ELECTRIC VEHICLES

BENEFITS OF ELECTRIFYING THE TRANPORTATION SECTOR

- India is 14 out of the top 20 most polluted cities in the world -

- due largely to fossil fuel combustion -

- The International Council for Clean Energy estimated that 74,000 -

- premature deaths were caused by air pollution due to tailpipe emission in India in 2015 -

ELECTRIFICATION OF VEHICLES WOULD:

Improve public health and quality of life of Indian peoples
Fortify energy security; India imports nearly 80% of its petroleum from whereas with renewables they could produce most of their own electricity domestically

References

Future Developments: Other Projects

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Vehicle electrification in India is currently in its infancy with only 1% of total vehicle sales being electric.
Of the 1% of electric vehicle sales, 95% of those vehicle sales are two-wheeled electric vehicles.

79% of vehicles in use are two wheeled vehicles (scooters, motorcycles)
four wheeled cars only make up 14% of the vehicles on the road.

Of the 14% of cars, 2% of that consists of higher end cars that would not be considered an economy car.

Electric vehicles in general are more expensive, higher end vehicles so it makes sense that the vast majority of electric vehicle sales are not cars as most people in India cannot afford a car - only every 167 out of 1000 people own some kind of vehicle - let alone a high end car.