Transitions in the Indian Electricity Sector: Impacts of High Renewable Share

India’s aggressive plan to increase the share of renewables in electricity generation capacity from 43 GW in 2015 to 175 GW in 2022 is expected to have implications on not only the power sector, but also the consumers, the economy and the environment. This project describes a simple aggregate model created to analyze macro-effects of any future electricity generation mix scenario. It uses MATLAB to create this model, which takes input variables like demand shape, electricity yield from solar and wind, both for 12 representative days of a year (one from each month). It also uses average hourly demand and growth rate, renewable installed capacity projections and ramp rate limits for thermal power plants to define scenarios. This paper showcases results for 2040 with different load curves, high and low renewable penetration levels. The results include storage requirements, cost changes, PLF of coal power plants and CO₂ emissions of the different scenarios. The study also looks at Delhi and Mumbai demand curves. The model can be customized for any city, state or country and be projected to any final year of analysis. The results are intended to inform policy decisions on an aggregate scale.