CEA Notifies National Electricity Plan, Lays Down The Pathway To 2032

The Central Electricity Authority (CEA), after much deliberations over the draft National Electricity Plan (NEP), today notified the latest National Electricity Plan (Volume I-Generation). The NEP represents a detailed plan for 2022-27 and a perspective plan for 2027-32. 

The report gave a sneak peek at the future of India’s electricity sector. The government document has projected an escalation of the share of non-fossil fuel energy in India’s total energy mix in the next one decade. It also talked about a decline in the addition of new coal-based electricity at par with clean energy upsurge during the period. CEA is mandated to prepare the NEP once in five years.

The latest NEP claimed that the peak electricity demand in India would rise from 203 Gigawatt (GW) in 2021-22 to 277.2 GW in 2026-27 and ultimately to 366 GW in 2031-32. It also estimated that the projected all-India electricity requirement would rise to 1907.8 Billion Units (BU) in 2026-27 and go up to 2473.8 BU in 2031-32. 

The report said that India would also require additional capacity generation from different energy sources to cater to the rise of total electricity demand and the higher peak demand. 

The NEP document said that India would need an additional 211.8 GW of additional generation capacity during 2022-27 to meet the peak demand and electricity demand for 2026-27. The report said this could come from the projected 31.88 GW of conventional capacity (coal and nuclear) and 179.9 GW of renewable sources (including large hydro). 

The NEP report said that based on the study results, India would achieve its target of 500 GW of non-fossil fuel energy by the end of 2029-30. But on the other hand, the report said that to cater to the peak demand and total energy demands for 2031-32, India would also require additional capacity addition between 2027-32. 

Need for battery storage

As per the report, this is possible with 291.8 GW of additional energy from all available sources. It includes an addition of 32 GW of conventional energy and 259.72 GW of renewable energy (including hydro). 

“Based on generation planning studies carried out for 2027-32, the installed Capacity for the year 2031-32 is likely to be 900,422 MW comprising of 304,147 MW of Conventional capacity…and 596,275 MW of Renewable based Capacity…excluding 5856 MW of likely Hydro-based imports along with BESS capacity of 47,244MW/236,220MWh,” the report said. 

The report also said that Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) requirement in 2026-27 varied from 2.1 GW/8.4GWh to 22.8 GW/ 91.2 GWh across various scenarios considered. Furthermore, it is also seen that the BESS requirement in 2031-32 varies from 38.7 GW/193.55 GWh to 67 GW/335.2 GWh. In many ways BESS requirements will go up with the share of renewable energy, particularly solar and wind in the mix, owing to their intermittent nature.