Ambitious plan to expand renewable energy in AP

Visakhapatnam: With Andhra Pradesh identifying 29 locations for the pumped hydro storage projects (PSP), efforts are on to develop them with a capacity of 33 GW in 1.45 lakh acres of land in Kadapa, Kurnool, Anantapur districts. The massive exercise would be taken up after conducting techno commercial feasibility studies. Followed by collaborative meeting held between the governments of Andhra Pradesh and Western Australia, in Visakhapatnam, the ambitious projects were brought to the fore.

With an immense potential to produce renewable energy and export power, the state government is giving top priority to promotion of renewable energy projects and formulated a comprehensive policy to attract investments for establishing wind, solar, hybrid projects on a massive scale in the state, said Joint Managing Director of APTRANSCO, I Prudhvi Tej.

The state's renewable export policy 2020 has been announced to promote investments in renewable energy sector to attract investors by establishing wind solar hybrid projects which will not only strengthen the sector but also be helpful in generating revenue, create local employment, improve people's standards of living and boost the industrial and economic development of the state, Prudhvi Tej explained. Under the policy, the renewable energy would be produced and exported to other locations without any obligation to the state discoms to procure power.

Besides, pumped hydro storage projects (PSP) with a capacity of 33 GW have been rolled out both on and off river sites by NREDCAP. This will largely help convert variable renewable energy sources into round the clock power and pump in large scale investments.

As part of the policy framework to promote renewable energy in AP, the government has decided to facilitate potential land to lease around 5 lakh acres to renewable energy export project developers, attract investments, equipment manufacturing facilities and generate additional revenue.

Through a land aggregating agency, the government will procure and aggregate lands at potential locations for allotment to the project developers on a lease basis.

In the next five years from now, the state has set a target of minimum 5 GW solar capacity additions, develop solar parks with utility infrastructure facilities, promote distributed generation, deploy solar powered agriculture pump sets and promote local manufacturing facilities. Similarly, under wind solar hybrid power policy, there is a plan to promote large grid connected wind solar PV systems, optimal utilisation of transmission infrastructure, encourage new and other emerging technologies.

Also, a 1350 MW pumped hydro project is being developed to enable larger integration of renewables into the grid and meet future power requirements without any hassle.