Opportunities for Hybrid Wind and Solar PV Plants in India
The share of variable renewable energy (VRE) on India's grid has surpassed 100 GW, and the government has ambitious plans reach 450 GW by 2030. One strategy to increase wind and solar PV deployment is through the co-location of wind and solar PV plants to form a single hybrid power plant. Hybrid plants have the potential to reduce transmission infrastructure costs and variability in the output power profile compared to a standalone plant with a single technology, and this report's analysis aims to take a first step towards quantifying the potential savings from hybridizing wind and solar PV plants in India and the size of this opportunity.
This resource includes a brute-force optimization to minimize the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for standalone wind, standalone solar PV, and hybrid wind/solar PV plants across all of India. By comparing these LCOEs, the authors determined that locations where hybrid plants exhibit potential cost savings and grid benefits exhibit both; a high interconnection cost and; a wind capacity factor between roughly 34% and 38%. However, this analysis does not capture the value of the electricity generated by looking at energy prices, nor does it quantify the potential of hybrids to provide other value streams such as firm capacity and reserves. Further, because the analysis does not compare solar PV and wind hybrids to alternative generation technologies or storage systems, it cannot be considered a holistic cost-benefit analysis.