Climate Change and You: Sunny Side Up, or Down?
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Dear Reader, I spent some time recently to understand the journey of the renewable energy sector in India, particularly solar power. My interest was piqued by the fact that renewable energy (RE) capacity has surpassed 200 gigawatts, contributing nearly 45% to installed power capacity in India.
Within renewables, solar capacity has seen a stellar 27-fold growth in less than a decade. And the best part is: a unit of electricity generated from solar energy costs as little as ₹2.5 per unit, nearly half the cost of thermal or coal-based electricity. The natural question to ask then is: if solar is so cheap, why are we not producing more electricity using this endless resource? Currently, solar contributes less than 10% of electricity generated.
The answer is complex. Firstly, RE power from solar and wind is intermittent. Solar panels do not generate electricity after sunset and produce less than the potential on cloudy days.
This sudden drop in generation during evenings when demand for power peaks, impacts the stability of electricity grids. For distribution companies or discoms who supply power to our homes and offices, this is a challenge. They have to arrange for backup power drawn from thermal or hydro projects to fill this gap.
This adds to their cost because they have to pay fixed charges to thermal power plants even when they are not drawing power. One way to avoid this problem is to store solar power in batteries. This raises costs and even the best available storage technologies offer only 2-4 hours of storage.
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