India’s Tata Power To Expand Renewables Capacity To 15 GW

• Tata Power has announced plans to go completely coal free by 2050 by phasing out its existing capacity
• It will instead focus on renewables with aim to add 2 GW of solar and hybrid capacities annually to grow its total portfolio to 15 GW by 2025
• Focus on technology to support its renewables plan under FutureReady strategy includes drones, robotic cleaning solutions and string level monitoring on real-time

Part of one of India's oldest and largest private businesses Tata Group, electric utility Tata Power Company Limited has plans to go coal free by phasing out its existing coal fired power generation capacity, in favor of renewables. By 2030, it wants to be able to count 80% of its energy mix as clean and green, meaning coming from wind, solar,  hydro and waste heat gas based capacity, and by 2050 achieve complete carbon neutrality.

At present, its total power generation capacity stands at 12.8 GW, comprising 8.859 GW of thermal power, 1.762 GW of solar, 880 MW of hydro, 932 MW of wind, and 375 MW of waste heat recovery/blast furnace gas (BFG).

In its annual report for 2020-21, Tata Power specified that it plans to pursue 2 GW of solar and hybrid capacities annually to grow from 4 GW of renewables to 15 GW in its portfolio by 2025, accounting for 60% of the power mix. By 2030, it should expand to more than 25 GW. Part of the plan is to empower 353 villages through microgrids, as against 161 installed now.

It also pointed out that its wholly owned subsidiary Tata Power Solar Systems Limited (TPSSL) had an order book of over 2.8 GW as on March 31, 2021. The subsidiary has 1.1 GW of solar cell and module manufacturing capacity since April 2021 (see Tata Power Solar Expands Solar Cell & Module Capacity).

Under its FutureReady strategy, Tata Power will focus on competitive bidding, hybrid project opportunities, round-the-clock renewables solutions, offshore wind projects, strategic tie ups for battery storage projects, floating solar coupled with hydropower and green hydrogen.

The company also wants to invest in technology to ensure its renewables portfolio incorporates FutureReady technologies as drones to detect offline strings, hot spots, diode defaults, revers faults, string mismatch, microcracks and surface faults; robotic waterless cleaning, and string level monitoring on real-time basis to track output and solar panel performance.

The annual report of Tata Power for FY 2020-21 is available on the company's website.