The Bhagirathi river flows past the Tehri dam. Photo: sharadaprasad/Flickr, CC BY 2.0
India’s BJP government wants to hike India’s installed hydel capacity to 70,000 MW by 2030 – a 50% jump from the current 45,700 MW – and is also readying pumped storage.
The catch: this push coincindes with a time when batteries and electrolysers are evolving rapidly, and when the cost of green hydrogen is expected to plummet as well.
New hydel projects are expected to go live by 2030, but their viability hinges on an external variable: the price of battery and electrolyser storage by then.
This is the second part of a three-part series on hydroelectric power in India’s future.
The first instalment of this series ended with a question. By 2030, India wants to get 500 GW of energy from wind and solar. At that point, India will need as much as 85 GW of storage…