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Unlocking India’s Energy Transition: Addressing Grid Flexibility Challenges and Solutions

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Couverture du briefing sur la transition énergétique de l'Inde d'Akul Raizada
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India is rapidly scaling up its renewable energy (RE) capacity, adding 15–20 GW annually, but the ambitious goal of 500 GW of non-fossil capacity by 2030 is at risk unless the pace accelerates.

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View of wind turbines farm in Nagercoil, South India. With a colorful sky and mountains as a background
View of Wind Turbines farm in Nagercoil, South India.
© Sudarsan Thobias /Shutterstock.com
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This green transition is revealing significant vulnerabilities in the national grid. Solar and wind energy, with their inherent variability, depend on unpredictable weather patterns, unlike traditional power plants. This challenge is magnified by India’s tight operating frequency band of 49.90 Hz to 50.05 Hz , where even slight fluctuations can cause grid instability. To make matters worse, climate change is heightening the grid’s vulnerability.

  1. India is racing toward a 500 GW renewable energy target by 2030 but achieving this will require a massive ₹2,442 billion (€26.86 billion) investment in grid expansion.
  2. Storage remains a bottleneck—India has just 4.7 GW of pumped hydro and 219 MWh of BESS as of March 2024, far from the 60.63 GW goal for 2030, with 41.65 GW expected from BESS alone.
  3. The corporate PPA market is surging, fueled by commercial and industrial demand, with capacity projected to hit 80 GW by 2030. However, policy volatility, high open access charges, and DISCOM hurdles persist.
  4. Unlocking India’s energy future hinges on regulatory stability, stronger financial de-risking mechanisms, and rapid smart meter deployment to modernize the grid and attract private investment.

 


 

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979-10-373-0999-0

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Unlocking India’s Energy Transition: Addressing Grid Flexibility Challenges and Solutions

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Author(s)
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Climate & Energy
Center for Energy & Climate
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Ifri's Energy and Climate Center carries out activities and research on the geopolitical and geoeconomic issues of energy transitions such as energy security, competitiveness, control of value chains, and acceptability. Specialized in the study of European energy/climate policies as well as energy markets in Europe and around the world, its work also focuses on the energy and climate strategies of major powers such as the United States, China or India. It offers recognized expertise, enriched by international collaborations and events, particularly in Paris and Brussels.

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Asia Map
Center for Asian Studies
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Asia is a nerve center for multiple global economic, political and security challenges. The Center for Asian Studies provides documented expertise and a platform for discussion on Asian issues to accompany decision makers and explain and contextualize developments in the region for the sake of a larger public dialogue.

The Center's research is organized along two major axes: relations between Asia's major powers and the rest of the world; and internal economic and social dynamics of Asian countries. The Center's research focuses primarily on China, Japan, India, Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific, but also covers Southeast Asia, the Korean peninsula and the Pacific Islands. 

The Centre for Asian Studies maintains close institutional links with counterpart research institutes in Europe and Asia, and its researchers regularly carry out fieldwork in the region.

The Center organizes closed-door roundtables, expert-level seminars and a number of public events, including an Annual Conference, that welcome experts from Asia, Europe and the United States. The work of Center’s researchers, as well as that of their partners, is regularly published in the Center’s electronic journal Asie.Visions.

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AI, Data Centers and Energy Demand: Reassessing and Exploring the Trends

Date de publication
24 February 2025
Accroche

The information and communication technologies sector today accounts for 9% of global electricity consumption, data centers for 1-1.3%, and artificial intelligence (AI) for less than 0.2%. The growing energy demands of cloud services first, and now AI workloads (10% of today’s data centers electricity demand), have exacerbated this trend. In the future, hyperscale data centers will gain shares amongst all kinds of data centers and AI will probably account for around 20% of data centers electricity demand by 2030.

Laure de ROUCY-ROCHEGONDE Adrien BUFFARD
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Europe’s Black Mass Evasion: From Black Box to Strategic Recycling

Date de publication
02 December 2024
Accroche

EV batteries recycling is a building block for boosting the European Union (EU)’s strategic autonomy in the field of critical raw minerals (CRM) value chains. Yet, recent evolutions in the European EV value chain, marked by cancellations or postponements of projects, are raising the alarm on the prospects of the battery recycling industry in Europe.

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Couverture Politique étrangère 4-2024

The New Geopolitics of Energy

Date de publication
03 December 2024
Accroche

Following the dramatic floods in Valencia, and as COP29 opens in Baku, climate change is forcing us to closely reexamine the pace—and the stumbling blocks—of the energy transition.

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Can carbon markets make a breakthrough at COP29?

Date de publication
30 October 2024
Accroche

Voluntary carbon markets (VCMs) have a strong potential, notably to help bridge the climate finance gap, especially for Africa.

Page image credits
View of Wind Turbines farm in Nagercoil, South India.
© Sudarsan Thobias /Shutterstock.com

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Unlocking India’s Energy Transition: Addressing Grid Flexibility Challenges and Solutions