The much awaited breakthrough of storing renewable energy with cost efficiency finally seems to be happening. According to a Climate Trends and JMK Research report, 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 Rs 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 Rs 4.97 per kWh in 2021, which would fall to Rs 3.4 per kWh by 2030,” said the economic viability report.   

In comparison, the cost of electricity produced from new coal power plants in Tamil Nadu is between Rs 4.5 per kWh to Rs 6 kWh, it added. According to the report, lithium-ion battery storage systems could also help reduce curtailment of renewable energy.

Close to 50 per cent of solar power in Tamil Nadu was curtailed since the lockdown in March 2020. Similarly, its curtailment of wind power in 2019 went up to 3.52 hours per day from 1.87 hours per day in 2018.

“The cost of hybrid renewable battery storage system is at parity with new coal power plants in Tamil Nadu. Moreover, in 10 years’ time, incremental capacity addition would further drive down the cost by over 31 per cent,” said the report.

Jyoti Gulia, Founder, JMK Research, said the system demonstrated that renewable energy coupled with battery storage was a technically and financially viable option to build new coal capacity and would be a dispatchable source of power that addresses the grid integration of intermittent power sources.