India aims to meet its growing power demands through the expansion of its renewable energy capacity. This warrants a strong transmission infrastructure to integrate and evacuate renewable energy, as a transmission network acts as the backbone of power systems to transfer power from generation stations to load centres. As the country works towards this mission, a thorough transmission network analysis is needed to design a power evacuation scheme and assess technical feasibility. CSTEP supports transmission utilities to strengthen their transmission infrastructure and integrate a higher share of renewable energy to provide a reliable supply.




Assessing the Impact of Integrating Electric Vehicles and Solar Rooftop Photovoltaic System into the Power Distribution Network
This paper presents our analysis of the impact of integrating electric vehicles (EVs) and rooftop photovoltaic (RTPV) on the power system distribution feeders at the 11 kV level. For the assessment, we selected a sample urban feeder that served both domestic and commercial consumers within Bengaluru city limits. The EV-demand projection was considered on the basis of a report by Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, while the RTPV potential was estimated using CSTEP’s Rooftop Evaluation for Solar Tool (CREST).
How an International Power Grid Will Help Optimise Our Solar Power Use
- In all countries, the clean energy transition comes with the problem of grid-balancing: matching the supply of power with its demand, owing to the intermittence of renewable energy.
- At the COP26 climate talks, India launched the ‘Green Grids Initiative – One Sun One World One Grid’, the first international network of a global solar power grid – with the UK.
- Under the GGI-OSOWOG initiative, the Indian grid can initially be connected to Africa, which accounts for 40% of total global horizontal irradiance.
- The India-Africa inter
Waste Heat: An Overview
For millions of years before human activity, the extent of heat radiated away from the earth remained largely unchanged, thus ensuring global climate patterns remained stable. Lately, the effects of anthropogenic climate change have become increasingly obvious in the form of increased incidence of forest fires, icecap melting, and hurricanes. The drastic increase in the levels of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere due to the Industrial Revolution has reduced the level of heat radiated away, thereby retaining more heat within the global climate system.
Smart Metering: A Status Check
The power sector is in the throes of a transition. This change is being driven mainly by renewable energy integration, energy storage technologies to support the renewables, and smart meters. By tracking electricity usage round the clock, smart metering facilitates dynamic pricing (raising or lowering the cost of electricity based on need), helping distribution companies (DISCOMs) cut down on commercial losses.
Grid Impact for High RE Scenarios in Southern India
The Southern Region (SR) leads renewable energy (RE) deployment in India, having an installed capacity of about 43 GW as of December 2020. Recognising the immense RE potential of this region, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), Government of India, has set an ambitious RE target of 59 GW for SR by 2022. However, the implications of injecting this additional power into the grid have to be understood. Because of the intermittent nature of renewables-based power, grid integration of RE has distinct technical implications.
Green energy spikes up
The ongoing pandemic has spared none, including the power sector. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), following the pandemic, the global energy demand has reduced by around 6%. This, along with the increase in the percentage share of renewable energy sources, indicates that carbon emissions this year will decrease by around 8%.
An empirical model for ramp analysis of utility-scale solar PV power
Short-term variability in the power generated by utility-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) plants is a cause for concern for power system operators. Without quantitative insights into such variability, system operators will have difficulty in exploiting grid integrated solar power without negatively impacting power quality and grid reliability. In this paper, we describe a statistical method to empirically model the ramping behavior of utility-scale solar PV power output for short time-scales.
Competitive Bidding for the Wind Sector
CSTEP organised a stakeholder consultation workshop on the wind energy sector at the request of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) recently. The main objectives of this workshop were to discuss the results of the national wind potential reassessment study conducted by CSTEP, use geo-spatial analysis to locate high potential wind zones for further development, and discuss mechanisms to ease the problems currently plaguing the sector, such as inadequate site allotments, inefficient power purchase agreements, pricing of renewable energy etc.
Quantifying PhotoVoltaic Power Variability Using Lorenz Curve
Short-term variability of utility-scale solar PhotoVoltaic (PV) plant is a significant issue for grid reliability. It is necessary to quantify the solar power variability in order to analyze the power variations on the electricity distribution network. In this paper, a Lorenz curve-based method is described to quantify the variability of power output from a megawatt-scale solar PV plant. The proposed method is used to analyze the power variability of Yelesandra PV power plant located in the state of Karnataka, India.