Why India is not able to fully use the solar power it generates
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At 3.30 in the afternoon on May 21, India registered its highest-ever power demand, of more than 270 GW.
It was a day when most of north, west and central India was seeing heatwaves, during which power demand typically spikes as millions of people use cooling devices simultaneously. While coal-based thermal power met almost 63% of the demand during the peak, solar power was the next biggest contributor, and supplied 28% of all power that was consumed.
Data from that day suggests its contribution could have been higher. Across the day, India generated around 10 gigawatt-hours less solar energy than it had capacity to, according to the daily report by Grid India, which operates the country’s power system. The data traces this unused capacity specifically to facilities in Gujarat and Rajasthan.
A key problem in this regard is insufficient transmission capacity – transmission lines are needed to evacuate power from generation plants. Typically, solar power capacity goes untapped because “the solar plant might not have enough capacity to evacuate the power to the nearest node”, explained Sunil Dahiya, founder and lead analyst at Envirocatalysts, a Delhi-based think-tank that works on environment and climate.
While India has added significant solar capacity in recent years, it has not built adequate transmission infrastructure required to...