Specific Technical & Regulatory Adaptations required in Indian Grid for High Penetration of Distributed Solar Energy

Abstract

Implementation of solar power projects are increasing rapidly in India. One of the main reason is to make the country energy independent and reduce carbon emissions. In year 2015-16 India imported almost 200 million tons of coal for the major use of power generation. Fuels for nuclear and gas based power plants are also imported in a significantly large amount. As India have abundant solar radiation for 300 sunny days per year, the Government is motivating the development of solar energy. The JNNSM (Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission) project India intends to implement 100GW capacity of solar power by 2022. This will include the development of 40GW capacity only from rooftop solar installations. It will be a large part of the total power capacity in India. Wind power developments are also gaining pace with various central and state power development projects. Solar and wind power are the fastest growing renewable sources across the world. But these renewable energy comes from the resources as solar irradiance and wind speed, which are not controllable. Therefore the power generation forecasting is less predictable and unreliable. Distributed installations is changing the structure of the Indian grid and making it more complex to operate effectively. It is creating some disruptions on the existing electric grid and making renewable energy source (RES) integration less compatible with the power system designed for centralized generation. So the grid operations are not reaching near to the expected performance and sometimes becoming harmful for the system due to high penetration of the distributed energy sources (DES). The existing business models of utility are directly affected by these changes and reducing the profitability for them, even though the electricity tariffs are increasing. This is an immediate requirement for utilities to point out the problems created by these distributed sources and adopt effective solutions for it. This is must to make those changes in existing grid infrastructure for optimum and efficient integration of DES. It is also a new opportunity to find new business models strategies to sustain their business with the future transformations. This is the time to start involvement of smart grid technology concepts into our system.