Renewable energy's future in India to depend on innovation: Official

Future of renewable energy in India will depend on innovations and storage cost, stressed a top government official pointing towards unviable price of storing energy at present.

This assumes significance in view of India's ambitious target of having 500 GW renewable energy by 2030.

"The future of (renewable) energy is totally dependent on innovations and storage cost coming down, less space (for energy storage), utilize high energy density, and materials (used to produce energy storage), which are available safe for us," said Advisor to Prime Minister of India, Tarun Kapoor addressing at a conference 'India Energy Storage Week' here.

Referring to recent tenders on energy generation bundled with storage, he pointed out that the energy price was some Rs 11 per unit (including Rs 2.5 per unit cost of solar energy in addition to charges for storage).

He noted that currently, renewable energy is 22-23 per cent (of total amount fed into the grid).

He was of the view that renewable energy share can be increased to 50 per cent without too much problem.

But going beyond that, he stated that storage becomes important.

About replacing fossil fuel and bringing the shift to electric which includes 4-wheelers, and 2-wheelers, he opined that India needs storage solutions for that as well.

The volume required for this shift is again tremendous, he added.

"The other concern for us is that we want to be totally self-reliant, we want that we should be able to manufacture in India and the entire process chain should happen here.

"And we also want that there should be investments in R&D so that we are able to innovate and get products which suit us and our requirements and materials which are available in India," he stated.

He noted that many international firms want to manufacture storage components in India.

Referring to the existing production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for batteries manufacturing in India, he stated that "there could be another phase of the PLI scheme and going forward we can think of some other support (for batteries manufacturing) if required."

"We hope that manufacturing comes into India... if manufacturing comes to India, the price will certainly go down, we also have to secure the minerals and raw materials required for manufacturing, say Lithium, so we have to secure Lithium," he stated.

He noted that India does not have much Lithium in India.

"We have not done much exploration. Only 8 per cent of India has been explored so far, we are very sure that if we explore we will find Lithium and something else as well," he said.

He stressed that it is important that materials (like Lithium to produce batteries) are available in India.

"So if we have to transition into the space where it will be, mostly renewable energy, we will have to find some place to store energy for our grids or Power Systems," he said.