| 34 | | 35 | SPECIAL FEATURE: GREENKO billion units of renewable energy annually. A further 8 GW of PSH is under construction. Once they had solved the cost problem, Greenko’s management focused on improving quality. Because of solar and wind’s intermittency, they discovered that adding more than around 10% of renewables to the electricity mix actually increased overall costs as more expensive, marginal power sources had to be kept on standby. A second issue was that the country’s industrial base, from steel to chemicals, was not willing to trust ‘unreliable’ renewable electricity at all and so was not decarbonizing rapidly enough. The solution to both problems was to add storage to the mix, to make renewables ‘dispatchable’ -- as reliable and flexible as coal or gas. Greenko’s particular answer, from 2019 onward, was to introduce closed-loop PSH, as at Pinnapuram. Not only does PSH provide much longer duration than batteries, which are more commonly used; it is also cheaper, allowing Greenko to deliver dependable electricity at a cost of $60-70 per Megawatt hour, compared to $100-$200 per MWh in the US or Europe, estimates Mr. Kolli. Its expertise in renewables is naturally leading Greenko to provide round-the-clock low-cost renewable energy in support of another type of carbon-free energy: green hydrogen (and green ammonia), which is produced by using renewable energy to power electrolyzers to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Amidst a global investment boom in green hydrogen projects, including in India, it is worth remembering that almost all the hydrogen being used in industry today is still ‘grey’ (produced from LNG in a process that emits carbon dioxide); and that in order to make the green variety economical, its cost must be reduced far below the current $6-8 per kilogram. In reality, hydrogen and ammonia offer another alternative way to transport and utilize green power. The market is large with a global demand of at least 100 MTPA of Green Hydrogen annually by 2030. The USA is doing so with incentives: the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act offers tax breaks worth up to $3/kg for new production. Countries from Australia and Chile to parts of the European Union are trying to do so by scaling up and building hydrogen hubs. Meanwhile, by providing its pumped storage concept to hydrogen producers, Greenko estimates that green hydrogen can be produced for $3/kg without direct subsidies – making India one of the world’s lowest-cost producers. Given the growing demand for hydrogen from hard-toabate industrial sectors that require heat as well as power in their manufacturing processes, this promises to become a huge market – as much as $35 billion annually in India alone, reckons Mr. Kolli. Adding up all its expansion plans, Greenko is on a path to operate 50 gigawatt hours (GWh) of energy storage by 2027, which can absorb the output of ~60 GWh of solar and wind. Pinnapuram, with some 10 GWh of storage capacity, is the first of four such large integrated projects, to be followed by three more in the Indian states of Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. With all that energy coursing through its storage facilities and transmission lines, the group has built a digital platform that links these with its data centers, to manage those complex flows. Its founders, who cut their teeth in the technology industry, now provide this platform to customers and third parties, helping them manage their electricity needs in real time. A huge advantage is the national electricity grid – the largest single frequency grid in the world – that allows electrons to flow throughout the country at a low cost, with no need for generators and off-takers to be geographically close. • By integrating this storage capability, Pinnapuram can compensate for the intermittency that plagues conventional renewable energy projects whenever the wind does not blow or the sun does not shine, allowing it to guarantee customers round-the-clock electricity. Anil Kumar Chalamalasetty, Founder & MD, and Mahesh Kolli, Co-founder & JMD, founded Greenko in 2006, at a time when India’s economy was expanding so rapidly that demand for power was outstripping its considerable fossil fuel reserves and it had started to import coal. The two men, cognizant of India’s natural wealth of sun, wind, water and land, saw a huge opportunity to meet some of that demand from more sustainable sources. The key, which they understood as experienced entrepreneurs, was to take advantage of proven, domestic technologies and resources in order to be able to produce their renewable energy at grid parity – in other words, for the same cost as thermal power. Greenko started with hydro power since this was wellestablished and already close to economic parity with coal. Four years later, it added wind and then, around 2016, solar, as economies of scale and improvements in technology turned the market competitive. Today, the company has an installed capacity base of 7.3 GW, with over 100 projects spread across 15 Indian states, able to generate over 20 Mahesh Kolli (left) and Anil Chalamalasetty (right) founded Greenko in 2006 Enabling deep decarbonization through carbon free energy and green molecules Greenko, India’s foremost energy transition company, is coming up with one of the world’s biggest renewable projects at Pinnapuram, a rural corner of south-eastern Andhra Pradesh. The scale is inspiring: Pinnapuram is a 1.68 GW Pumped Storage Hydroelectric (PSH) facility which can effectively transform 4,000 MW of intermittent solar and wind energy into firm and schedulable power. Greenko, its developer, is constructing two reservoirs, including a 49-meter-high dam, boring seven tunnels, assembling turbines, switchgear and thousands of other components. Size, however, is not even the most notable aspect of this project. What makes Pinnapuram a world’s first is the integration of the three different types of clean energy and, in particular, the use of closed-loop PSH for storing power – rather than a battery array, or not having any storage capacity at all. Energy generated by the wind and solar farms will be used to pump water uphill from the lower to the upper reservoir at the rate of 1 billion cubic feet in nine hours. Once needed, the water is released downhill, driving hydroelectric turbines, with gravity doing the work. As a closed-loop system, it will not need any river water once the lower reservoir has been filled initially, eliminating any local environmental impact. The AP 01 IREP at Pinnapuram, Kurnool in south India includes a 1.68 GW pumped storage hydroelectric facility
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