How can India leverage its vast renewable energy resources and advancements in artificial intelligence to drive sustainable growth and innovation in the face of increasing energy demands?
Electricity is critical for the growth, prosperity, and wellbeing of humanity and for technologies including data science and artificial intelligence. Looking into the industrial revolution from Industry 1.0, 1780, to 5.0, now, energy was and is the backbone of progress.
In India, the installed capacity increased from 1.4 Gigawatt (GW) in 1947 to 453 GW in September 2024. Generating stations comprises > 300 thermal power plants, 200 hydro stations, 24 nuclear reactors, 850 wind stations, 50 major solar power plants of 10 MW capacities or more, 22 waste-to-energy plants and the numbers and capacities of these plants are on increase on a continual basis. Non-fossil fuel capacity during the same time period has increased from 0,5 GW to 203 GW. Electricity generation grew from 4182 GWh to 1873000 GWh and per capita consumption grew from 16.3 Kilowatt-hours (KWh) to 1450 KWh.
The energy resources like coal, hydro and renewable are unevenly distributed in the country. Coal reserves are mainly available in the Central and Eastern part of the country, whereas hydro energy resources are primarily available in Himalayan Range in the Northern and North-Eastern states and scarcely in other states.
Power Transmission
The development of an efficient, coordinated, economical and robust electricity transmission and distribution system is essential for smooth flow of electricity from generating stations to consumers through distribution networks / load centers. For optimum utilization of resources in the country and to provide reliable, affordable, un-interrupted ‘Quality Power for All’ a robust and smart transmission and distribution network is essential.
National and Regional Grids
Indian National Grid is one of the largest operational synchronous grids in the world with 453 GW of installed power generation capacity. National grid comprises of 5 Regional grids, Northern, Western, Southern, Eastern, and North-Eastern grids.
SAARC Energy Grid
With an aim to promote energy exchanges and usage of renewable energy in the region, the Indian grid is synchronously interconnected with Bhutan, and asynchronous links are operational connecting Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Nepal. An undersea interconnection with Sri Lanka, India–Sri Lanka HVDC link, is under execution.
Energy evacuation systems allow generated power to be immediately transmitted from generating stations to the grid for further transmission/ distribution to load centers. The transmission system expanded over the years for evacuation of power from generating stations to load centers through Intra State and Inter State Transmission System. The progressive integration of regional grids began in 1992, and completed in December 2013, achieving 'ONE-NATION-ONE-GRID-ONE-FREQUENCY' with synchronous interconnection of all the 5 regional Grids.
Energy Management India’s transmission network consists of more than 4,81,000 (Circuit Kilometers) ckm of transmission lines and 12,25,260 MVA of transformation capacity and these are on continual increase to cater increasing generated power evacuation and consumption form upcoming capacities. Besides, inter-regional capacities have increased by a whopping 224% to 1,16,540 MW.
Data Centres Transmission System is playing a catalyst role in energy transition in the country, by extending the grid to renewable rich areas and facilitating the Renewable Energy projects to connect into the grid. Ongoing transmission capacity additions have helped in exploiting renewable energy increasingly and the trend is on increase.
Data Science and Artificial Intelligence
Digitization has yielded benefits in planning, haulage, storage, and usage of fuels thereby minimizing losses, costs and utilization hence minimizing stoppages of stations for want of coal. During Jun '24, the ever highest peaking load of 250GW was catered by the Indian grid without any fuel shortage/difficulty.
Digitization has greatly contributed to coal haulage planning, optimizing coal stocks, minimizing coal stock out situations, thereby making best use of available coal & also minimizing requirement of imported coal.
Data science helps in analyzing energy consumption patterns by collecting data from a variety of sources, such as smart meters, building management systems, and industrial control systems. Data are used to identify trends and patterns of energy consumption.
Data science is revolutionizing the renewable energy sector by optimizing energy production, storage, load management, and predictive maintenance. By harnessing the power of data analytics, renewable energy systems are becoming more efficient, reliable, and cost-effective.
Further, artificial intelligence is finding its applications in demand forecasting, responding to dynamic demands, failure prevention, predictive maintenance, energy trading, enhancing renewable energy generation, forecasting, smart grid management, energy storage, energy efficiency, energy trading, emission tracking, nuclear generation, enhancing energy productivity, resources management, smart homes, smart grids, smart cities, managing decentralized energy sources, analytics, reporting, decision taking, cost optimization, autonomous grid operation, carbon capture, utilization and storage, nuclear energy, minimizing energy leakages etc.
Smart Grid Mission
Under the smart grid mission, India has developed smart grids. India has surpassed the installation of five million smart meters milestone under the National Smart Grid Mission. The Central government aims to install 250 million smart meters by end of 2025.
Possibilities and Potential
The ongoing innovations in AI are expected to successfully address the challenges around solar cell efficiency, manufacturing scalability and grid integration, solar PV could supply > 50% of global annual electricity generation by 2050 and so in India.
The flexibility of AI solutions means that solar technology still has unrealized performance potential that could support its positioning and as such become an indispensable international energy source into the near future.
International Solar Mission
India and France jointly promoted the International Solar Alliance. The International Solar Alliance has become an alliance of more than 120 signatory countries, most being sunshine countries, which lie either completely or partly between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn.
Green Grids Initiative
One Sun One World One Grid, which was launched during COP 26, aims to support the addition of 1000 GW of solar capacity and to raise US $ > 1000 billion investments by 2030. It is promoted by India, France, USA, Australia, UK, and 78 other countries who are the signatories. To help deliver the vision of One Sun One World One Grid, member countries resolved to work for a common global framework aimed at investing in solar energy, wind energy, energy storage, building long-distance cross-border transmission lines, developing and deploying cutting edge techniques and technologies to modernize power systems and support green grids, supporting the global transition to zero emission vehicles.
Conclusion
India is progressing well to achieve its non-fossil fuel capacity target much before the declared timeline. India has already surpassed internationally committed 40% non-fossil fuel capacity during Nov '21 vis-à-vis target by 2030 and now it stands at 46.4% Simultaneously, India has progressed demonstrating leadership to global leadership, improving its climate change performance index rank from 31 to 7 between 2014 – 2023 and has become the only country among G20 / major economies globally to rank among top 10. India is supporting member countries through International Solar Alliance to increasingly exploit solar potential thereby contributing in reducing GHGs emissions globally. Data science and Artificial Intelligence applications are predicted to speed up non-fossil capacity additions, improve efficiency and effectiveness thereby boosting energy transition in India and become carbon neutral well before 2070.
For further discussion on the same, please reach out to Mr. Sushil Kumar Sharma on LinkedIn.
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