Tamil Nadu added cost of energy for a hybrid renewable energy battery storage system

Renewable energy along with battery storage in Tamil Nadu is cost competitive with new coal power plants.

It added that the cost of energy for a hybrid renewable energy battery storage system in Tamil Nadu would be ₹ 4.97 per kilowatt hour (kWh) in 2021. The report studied a hypothetical RE-storage system for the analysis. “The levelized cost of energy for a hypothetical hybrid renewable battery storage system for the state would be ₹ 4.97 per kWh in 2021, which would have fallen to ₹ 3.4 per kWh by 2030,” said the economic viability analysis by Climate Trends and JMK Research. In comparison, the cost of electricity produced from new coal power plants in Tamil Nadu is between ₹ 4.5 per kWh to ₹ 6 kWh, it added.

Methodology:

According to the report, the hypothetical hybrid system caters to one gigawatt (GW) of solar and wind capacity in 2021 with two hours of battery back-up.  It tracks the system from an initial capacity of 800 MW of solar and 200 MW of wind power along with 500 MWh of storage, that would cater to Tami Nadu’s average annual power demand for two hours per day from 2021-23. Its capacity is augmented to three hours of daily back-up for 2024-2026, and then four hours per day for 2027-2030. It further added that if this hypothetical, solar-wind-powered storage system were to wheel all of its energy to Delhi, even after accounting for inter-state transmission charges it could cover 100 per cent of Delhi’s average yearly electricity demand by 2030 at ₹ 4.4 per kWh.