NEW DELHI - Looking to scale up its renewable energy portfolio from 4 gigawatts to 25 GW by 2030, Indian electricity producer Tata Power is betting heavily on the huge potential that India has over 1.3 billion people offering in the field of green energy.
In an exclusive interview, Praveer Sinha, the CEO of Tata Power and managing director, told Nikkei Asia that renewable energy is a very good source of energy. The country's location is as shown in the photo below, noting that most parts of the country have a lot of sunshine all the year unlike India, for example, France which has a lot of cloudy days and snowfall. So for us, this is a very good opportunity to see how we can increase generation through renewable sources. Sinha said the company aims to provide excellent 24 - 7 renewable solutions through a combination of solar, wind and other energy sources, which provide a range of services to customers.
The power generation unit of the largest conglomerate in India, Tata Group, hopes to add 2 GW of orders every year to achieve its 2030 goal. Clean energy currently makes up 30% of Tata Power's portfolio which it wants to double by 2025.
On Tuesday, the company said its solar wing had bagged orders worth 5.38 billion rupees $71.7 million from state-run Energy Efficiency Services to construct 100 MW of solar projects. Tata Power is active in renewable and conventional energy, power transmission and distribution and newer consumer-oriented business such as rooftop solar power and electric-vehicle charging stations.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi puts special emphasis on green energy. It announced in August that total installed renewable energy capacity in India had exceeded 100 GW, a milestone in the country's effort to reach 450 GW by 2030 - the same year by which it aims to have 30% of electric vehicle penetration. At present, less than 1% of the country's vehicles are electrically powered.
In the PM-Kusum initiative, the government seeks to provide clean energy to more than 3.5 million farmers by converting their irrigation pumps to solar power.
According to government data, diesel-powered irrigation pumps emit more than 5.5 billion liters of fuel a year and use 15.4 million tons of carbon dioxide. More than 20 million other pumps that are connected to the power grid consume 213 billion units of electricity annually, or 18% of India's total power consumption.
The PM KUSUM initiative, Sinha said, proposes to convert nearly 4 million of the country's 9 million solar-powered pumps to diesel power. The rest will still be diesel, said he. Because of a massive amount of solar power, there is an opportunity to convert 5 million pumps and then scale all the 30 million to solar. It's a win-win solution for everyone and a fantastic solution, he said, adding that every farmer with a pump will then have a solar energy generation facility independent of the electricity grid and thus be in a position to meet their own energy requirements.
Tata Power, for its part, is trying to be able to meet growing demand of electricity to get electric cars rolling. The company is the largest operator of vehicle charging infrastructure in India, having installed nearly 1,000 charging points in over 170 cities.
What we are doing is we will create the EV infrastructure in the country, Sinha said, pointing out that Tata Power has installed public chargers in bus stations, malls, coffee shops, banks and other places. We do it also for fleet owners like Uber and Ola. Sinha said the company plans to install EV chargers for a 3600 km stretch from India's southernmost region of Kanyakumari to north-east Kashmir, a town at the northern tip of the country. In the next three years, we will get 100,000 chargers and then do it in the next 10 years to 10,000. This gels well with plans by another group, Tata Motors, to expand its EV business. Tata Motors, which also owns the British luxury brand Jaguar Land Rover, announced Tuesday that U.S. based private equity firm TPG's Rise Climate Fund would pump 75 billion rupees along with co-investor ADQ of Abu Dhabi, to the new EV subsidiary of the Indian automaker, translating to an equity valuation of up to $9.1 billion.
In the wide-ranging interview, Sinha also responded to queries about the current coal shortage in India, which has hit headlines globally. I think it is a temporary thing, he said, adding that the demand for energy is very bad in October as it is a very bad month in terms of humidity. He added that all manufacturing activity, industries and commercial establishments have now closed after remaining suspended for months due to the COVID -19 pandemic.
All of a sudden, because of so much demand for electricity, the generation has to ramp up very rapidly. That is creating the trouble, he said, expressing hope that demand will fall in the next few weeks, when the early signs of winter begin around mid November.