India needs ₹4.74-lakh-cr investment to meet renewable energy capacity addition target

An investment of ₹4.74-lakh crore is required to achieve the balance renewable energy capacity addition target of 86 gigawatt (GW) by March 2022.Responding to questions in the Lok Sabha, RK Singh, Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Power and New and Renewable Energy, said a cumulative renewable energy capacity of 88,793.39 MW has been installed up to August 31. This is part of the 175 GW installed renewable energy generation capacity target set by the Centre in 2017.

Capital expenditure
Singh said that as per the National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP) Report prepared by the Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, the projected capital expenditure in the power sector namely for generation, transmission and distribution segments, is ₹ 14,10,428 crore. He said that in addition to this, it is estimated that ₹4,74,136.35 crore is the investment required to meet the remaining 86,206.61 MW renewable energy addition goals.

Commenting on the overall power generation and deficit situation of the country, Singh said: “There is no deficit of power generation capacity in the country. The installed generation capacity is around 372GW, whereas the peak demand so far has only been about 184 GW.”

Singh also said that the All-India Average Plant Load Factor (PLF) of coal and lignite-based power generating stations has come down due to the impact of Covid. The average PLF to thermal power plants has come down from 64.46 per cent in 2014-2015 to 48.32 per cent in 2020-2021 (up to July 2020).

“The low PLF in the current year is primarily due to Covid-19. However, with increasing demand of electricity every month since April 2020, the PLF has increased further to 49.01 per cent in August 2020,” said Singh.