RENEWABLE ENERGY POOLING
- February 8, 2022
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN Topics
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RENEWABLE ENERGY POOLING
TOPIC: Economy
Context- The Union power ministry is set to come out with rules to pool solar tariffs to accelerate the procurement of solar power by power distribution companies.
Concept-
Why is pooling required?
- A consistent fall in solar power tariffs due to the falling price of solar panels has led to discoms waiting for a further fall in tariffs rather than contracting PPAs at current prices.
- A move to pool tariffs could help speed up procurement of solar power.
- Renewable Purchase Obligation (RPO) mandates that all discoms meet a minimum specified quantity of their requirements from renewable energy sources.
What is renewable energy bundling?
- The Centre is encouraging bundling of renewable energy with thermal power under existing PPAs.
- Bundling of renewable energy with thermal power would particularly benefit old thermal power projects which have become unviable due to high variable cost.
- A move to bundle cheaper renewable energy in these PPAs will allow discoms to lower their average cost of power procurement.
- The Centre is targeting bundling of 10,000 Megawatt of renewable energy with fossil fuel based power over the next 4-5 years.
- As of 2020, 38% of India’s installed electricity generation capacity is from renewable sources. This comes to 136 GW out of 373 GW. And the government has already set an ambitious target to achieve 500 gigawatt (GW) of renewable energy capacity by 2030.
Reverse Bundling Scheme: The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy ‘reverse bundling’ scheme for balancing between coal-fired power and renewable.
- To ‘bundle’ the solar energy with the cheaper coal fired power.
- This is done for pushing renewable power in a market driven manner.
- It will ensure 24*7 uninterrupted electricity.
- The policy stipulates supply of 51% renewable energy with or without energy storage bundled with 49% thermal power component.