India’s electricity demand is projected to grow at 6 per cent per year between now and 2030, reaching about 2040 trillion watt hour (TWh) of grid-based electricity demand.
Talking into account the projected transmission and distribution (T&D) losses and auto-consumption the generation requirement would be of the order of 2400 TWh.
The growth trajectory of cooling industry, particularly air conditioning, can become a major roadblock in India’s energy transition to renewables by 2030, according to a study by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI).
The air conditioning sector is expected to grow at around 10 per cent which may present a huge challenge for the integration of renewables in the energy system because much of the country’s residential cooling demand falls at night when solar is not available.
Scenarios studying the grid integration of renewables clearly show that the need for power system flexibility is projected to grow significantly under ambitious scenarios for the increase in renewables.
While total demand is projected to double by 2030, the need for daily balancing which is shifting energy within a day to balance the variability in solar output, is also projected to grow six-fold by 2030.
The available supply of flexibility is expected to exceed by the mid-2020s, posing an absolute constraint on the growth of renewables.
An analysis of the grid integration challenge of variable renewables in India clearly show that this transformation will be unachievable unless substantial progress is made in developing a comprehensive portfolio of flexibility options.
Reference- Economic Times, Mercom India, Clean Technica