Lower consumer power costs key to AI-renewable success: MNRE Joint Secy

The success of artificial intelligence and renewable energy convergence will be when the overall power cost comes down, and industrial competitiveness goes up, a government official said on Monday.

India has been significantly adding renewable energy capacity, and the country's total capacity is around 520 GW.

Also, there is around 35 GW of distributed renewable energy capacity.

JVN Subramanyam, Joint Secretary at the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), said Artificial Intelligence (AI) is going to be a game changer, especially for distributed renewable energy.

He was participating in a session on 'Global Mission on AI for Energy Scaling through citizen-centric India Energy Stack' at the AI Impact Summit in the national capital.

 

"I think in the next two to three years' time, success in AI and the renewable energy convergence would be where the overall cost of power to the consumers goes down, our industrial competitiveness goes up, and consumer empowerment becomes prosumer empowerment," he said.

He also mentioned that the challenge lies in the distribution systems and where assets that are being developed across the country need to be maintained.

AI should not be seen as just a technology, but as a development infrastructure, Hemang Jani, Senior Advisor to Executive Director for India, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka at the World Bank, said.

According to him, AI cannot bring fiscal prudence and governance reforms, but it can enable all of these things.