Pumped Storage Hydro

India’s Ministry of Power updating plan for pumped storage hydro development

India’s Ministry of Power updating plan for pumped storage hydro development

The Ministry of Power in India is seeking comments on draft guidelines released to promote development of pumped storage hydro projects in the country.

With the “increasing presence of variable and intermittent renewable energy sources” such as solar and wind in the energy mix, there is a “grid-level challenge” that requires incentivizing technologies offering storage and ancillary services attributes, the ministry said. Calling pumped storage hydro “a MW scale, domestically available, time tested, and internationally accepted technology available for addressing this requirement,” the ministry is seeking input on development guidelines.

The ministry said these guidelines are being formulated to set the direction of pumped storage development with a goal to both stabilize the grid and meet peaking power demand.

Guided by the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) targets, India is on a path to reduce the emission intensity of its gross domestic product (GDP) by 45% by 2030, get to 50% of installed capacity from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030 and achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2070.

On why pumped storage hydro is an attractive option, the ministry said it provides the necessary scale of storage and has a service life of more than 40 to 50 years, which is much more than any other energy storage technology available. This also results in a low cost of delivered energy over the life of the projects.

Click here to read the full notice and provide comments.

Gandhisagar (or Gandhi Sagar) is one example of a pumped storage project being developed in the country. Greenko Group is developing this off-stream pumped storage project in Madhya Pradesh. When complete, it will provide a pumped storage capacity of 10,080 MWh, with the creation of a new upper reservoir near Khemla block village and use of the existing Gandhisagar Reservoir as the lower reservoir.