Thermal power will remain

India will have to continue with the highly polluting thermal plants to meet its power requirement until battery energy storage became viable Union Power Minister R K Singh said

Until battery energy storage becomes viable, India would have to add thermal power capacity to meet the demand Mr Singh said while addressing conference organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry CII.

At present the battery storage is Rs 10 per unit and the energy rate is Rs 2.30, he said. The Minister said he i pushing the case for another production-linked incentive scheme for grid-scale battery energy storage.

The government will crack down on developers of power projects, who miss the scheduled commercial date of operation or deadline to complete the project.

All these power projects are won under the bidding process and if they miss the deadline to complete the project, then the developer will be banned from participating in project bidding for one year. On the second such incident, the developer will be banned for five years, Singh said, adding that he is going to put this rule in the bidding policy of the government.

Generation capacity addition is a big challenge, as people are sitting on several projects won under the bidding process. Power project developers are waiting for demand to grow to complete their project. This is not done the Minister warned