Evolution of Renewables
I remember 2010-11 when everybody used to say it was an alternative form of energy and fast forward 14 years, solar, or for that matter wind, is not alternative anymore. From being a fringe player, they are now at the core of almost every country’s strategy. So that’s a big shift — from being an alternative to becoming a core source of energy for India and for a lot of other countries in the world as well.
Solar, Storage & Hydrogen
We have to look at solar adoption in three stages. So 15 years back, that was stage one wherein you started putting solar or green electrons into the grid. These electrons have two properties. Number one, these electrons cannot be controlled. You have the sun or you have wind, you inject these electrons into the grid and you know you have energy, but if you need energy in the morning or evening or in the night, you need to find some alternative ways of doing it. Number two was the cost. Fifteen years back, this was still funded by a lot of governments through policy incentives.
So fast forward 15 years, both these things have changed. Number one, you can store a lot of these electrons using storage, or green hydrogen is one way of doing it as well. Number two, the commercials have improved so much that right now we do not need governments to pour money so that this source can expand. Governments just need the right policy and the private industry will follow and ensure that the targets are met.
These two major changes can ensure that for the next 10 years, a lot of base load, which previously used to be or which still in India is coal, will slowly start shifting to a combination of solar, storage and after that green hydrogen.
Grid Stability
So if you look at solar alone, you cannot have a grid where you have a lot of solar alone because that will make the grid less stable and as much as we want our grids to be green, we want our grids to be reliable as well. When you start pairing competitive low-cost solar energy with storage and then eventually you start pairing this with hydrogen, you have a complete source which is cost-effective, green and also reliable. With this pairing, you can start shifting a lot of base load from coal or gas to this combination in the coming 5 or 10 years.
This was not possible 15 years back. Fifteen years back, you could only talk about concentration or penetration of 15 to 20 to 25 percent and everybody knew that after you have 20 percent penetration of solar or wind into the grid, a lot of policies would have to evolve for the penetration to further increase, which is what happened in India specifically.
If you look at the latest policies over the last three years, they are slowly moving towards a combination of solar plus storage, or what they call RTC round-the-clock power or FDRE, which is fixed dispatchable renewable energy. So the policies have slowly evolved over time to ensure that the penetration of solar in combination with storage and hydrogen becomes greater for the Indian grid, which is happening right now and this trend is going to continue for the next five years.
The Duck Curve
So the duck curve is famously associated with the California grid. They showed a curve which became very famous. In the afternoon, you have so much solar that the entire lower curve of the state or a country looks like a duck.
India, as a country, was smart enough to recognise that this will happen to India as well and as I said, five years back the policies slowly started evolving. The government said we like solar but we also like solar in the morning and evening, what can you do? So one of the technical solutions was that people started pairing it with batteries so that you can generate in the afternoon but at the same time also release some of this energy in the evening and the next phase would be to pair it with green hydrogen.
The only way to produce green hydrogen is to inject electrons which are green, and only green electrons are wind or solar. So you have a solar plant, you need a bit of storage also to stabilise it and then the entire electricity goes into an electrolyser and then you end up producing green hydrogen. Green hydrogen may not be used for the grid itself but it will be used in other industries which we need to decarbonise and where it is not possible with solar alone.
So yes, the duck curve remains a phenomenon. I can’t say that we have not seen this phenomenon but with smart policies and forward-looking initiatives, I think we will be able to get past the duck curve phenomenon, at least for the Indian grids.
The Canyon Curve
One can keep looking at a shape and we can keep giving names to it. The moot point is the sun only shines for so many hours and you can only generate for so many hours. How do you generate during those hours effectively and then disperse this entire energy throughout the day? That’s the core problem which everybody is trying to solve.
It is not easy because look at transmission. Transmission is going to become a bottleneck. If you’re only generating during those particular hours, what do you do with transmission? It’s a very expensive resource for any country to be used for only four hours.
So as we move along, the entire effort will be about how to flatten the curve and that’s where our technology comes in. If you look at a sunflower, in the morning it looks at the sun and then follows the sun till evening. That’s what our tracker does. We look at the sun in the morning so that you are able to generate more electricity in the morning, which means you will need less storage. Storage is expensive, although storage costs have come down a lot, but it is still expensive. In the evening you are still facing the Sun so you generate more energy.
So if you look at our technology, imagine a curve which is very steep and you just flatten it out. Somebody just pushes it down and you have a relatively flatter curve. You also need less storage as compared to a normal solar plant without trackers.
So all these technologies — solar trackers, panels, storage and eventually green hydrogen — are part of the same puzzle. What are we trying to solve? We are just trying to disperse this energy throughout the day using all these combinations possible.
Successful Energy Transition
I have had the honour of working in almost 25 markets in the last 15 years — from Southeast Asia, Australia, the Middle East and Europe to the US — and I can clearly see a pattern among the countries which have done well. I’ll give you a few data points.
Number one, consistency. There are a lot of countries which had great policies in 2015-16 but they could not sustain the momentum. They came up with a policy, everybody jumped in, they got a few gigawatts of solar and then nothing happened, which is not the case with India.
From 2010 or 2011 when we had the first solar mission announced till date, the policy has been consistent. Obviously we are evolving, but the policy has been consistent, which is not the case with a lot of countries. That’s number one.
Number two, a lot of countries are not able to plan the grid properly. So they come out with a lot of capacity, people install solar, then they start seeing curtailment and investors run away. However, in India we planned for the mission and the capacity on transmission was also planned in parallel and we have all the green zones which got developed. On a broader scale, we have done it in a much better planned fashion as compared to a lot of countries.
So consistency, long-term policies and grid planning — I think these are the key ingredients. India is one of the countries which got it right and that’s why you see around 40-45 gigawatts of solar coming onto the grid every year, which is commendable.
India’s Global Role
India as an in-house market, as I said, is doing great and the policies are consistent, forward-looking and we are able to attract the best capital in the world to further the mission of making our grids greener, which is great. But there is a bigger opportunity beyond the domestic market — how do you export expertise and technology, including manufacturing, outside of India? And this is already happening.
Let’s look at GameChange. We are based out of the US. After the US, our second largest concentration of people and technology is in India. Currently, we have almost 55-60 percent market share in solar trackers in India and this is growing consistently. At the same time, India is also a hub for us when it comes to engineering and manufacturing. A lot of products are getting manufactured in India and exported outside of India.
So as we progress, it’s not only the engineering talent which we have, which is a proven thing, but at the same time everybody is looking for diversification. Right now, supply chains are very concentrated in one region and everybody has seen, especially after COVID, that you cannot have a situation wherein all your supply chain is concentrated in one region. India could be a very good alternative for a lot of countries in the world.
This is happening, though not at the pace at which it should have happened over the last three years, but I can already see that this shift is happening not only in the US but globally. A lot of countries want alternative sources of technology.
If you look at PV modules, India now has around 100 gigawatts of capacity on the PV module side and the cell capacity is also ramping up. Slowly, some of these players, as they expand and spend more on R&D, will start exporting technology not only for in-house use but also outside the country.
So this transition is taking more time than it should have, but I can see that the transition is happening. Same with GameChange — we are also a large player in the country but we are also using India as a base to export our talent as well as our products outside the country.
