India needs more energy storage facility

A study by India’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), said that creating and developing energy storage facilities is an important component in boosting India’s power system flexibility and the share of renewables which eventually will help the country to decarbonise.

“By combining generation, storage, advanced controls, and improved forecasting in hybrid plants, operators can achieve economies of scale by sharing infrastructure as well as siting and permitting costs. These plants can also provide the full spectrum of existing essential reliability services as well as new, evolving grid reliability services,” the researchers said in a statement.

The center said that the researchers will test a variety of energy storage systems, including pumped storage hydropower, battery, hydrogen, flow battery, kinetic, and ultracapacitor energy storage to understand more about energy’s transformation in that spectrum. 

“For the power grid to economically and reliably integrate large amounts of variable renewable generation, it will require robust energy storage capabilities and a rethinking of the value renewable energy assets bring to the grid,” said NREL Chief Engineer Vahan Gevorgian in the statement.