Panel for action plan to link renewable energy to grid

A high-level panel has suggested for real-time trading of power and making energy exchanges more flexible to facilitate integration of renewable energy with the electricity grid.

“There is need for more frequent market clearing in power exchanges, eg. multiple iterations in day-ahead segment and new products like real-time market, flexibility markets, capacity markets, etc,” suggested the Technical Committee on large-scale integration of renewable energy.

Elaborating further, it said that more frequent market clearing (sale of power) and introducing new products like real-time markets — the opportunity to buy and sell power two hours ahead — may provide a platform to sell or buy surplus power when in deficit.

While some of the suggestions of the panel have been completed with active support of the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission and State Electricity Regulatory Commission, and other stakeholders, there are few things are still pending, including a regulatory framework for forecasting and scheduling.

India has set the target of achieving 175 gW of renewable generation capacity by 2022. In order to integrate such high penetration of renewable energy and address the concerns of the stakeholders in renewable energy, a high-level Technical Committee was constituted.

After extensive deliberations, the committee has recommended several actions, such as bringing flexibility in the conventional generation, frequency control, generation reserves, ancillary services, forecasting, scheduling, deviation settlement mechanism, balancing requirement, data telemetry and communication, Renewable Energy Management Centres (REMCs), transmission system augmentation and strengthening, as well as certain compliance actions at renewable generation front.