Japanese conglomerate Mitsui & Co. has invested in a 1,300MW wind-plus-solar-plus-storage project development in India.
Mitsui’s investment in the project by ReNew, an Indian renewable energy company, comes six months after the government-owned Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) signed a round-the-clock (RTC) power purchase agreement (PPA) to procure 400MW from its multiple sites.
The multi-state project will have a total of 1,300MW of renewable energy from three wind farms totalling 900MW, solar PV totalling 400MW and a battery energy storage system (BESS) up to 100MWh in capacity. It will be spread across Rajasthan, Karnataka, and Maharashtra, all on the west side of the country.
ReNew is doing the EPC, O&M, and project management for the project which will start operating commercially in Q3 2023. The 25-year PPA with SECI was signed at ₹2.90/kWh (3.8 US cents), which will grow 3% a year for the first 15 years before remaining stable for the remaining 10 years of the PPA.
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The project is expected to cost around US$1.2 billion and is designed to operate at an 80% average annual plant load factor (PLF) with a minimum capacity utilisation of 70% a month.
Mr. Sumant Sinha, Founder, Chairman and CEO of ReNew Power said: “The RTC project, the first of its kind in India, provides the lowest cost and emission-free 24 X 7 renewable electricity. We are proud to partner with Mitsui, a leading global conglomerate, to support India’s green energy transition and look forward to strengthening this partnership in the future.”
ReNew is one of the largest renewable energy Independent Power Producers (IPPs) in India and globally, it claims. It develops, builds, owns, and operates utility-scale wind, solar and hydro energy projects and has a total portfolio of 10.2 GW of renewable energy projects across India as of February 2022.
It recently signed a joint venture (JV) agreement with global system integrator Fluence to deliver energy storage solutions in India.
The energy storage market is set to grow substantially in the coming years at both the upsteam and downstream levels. The Central Electricity Authority reckons it needs 28GW of energy storage to reach its 2030 decarbonisation goals while the government recently awarded funds to projects building battery manufacturing capacity totalling 50GWh.
