India will invest 127 billion rupees ($1.8 billion) on lines to transmit power from solar parks to enable Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s goal of boosting clean-energy capacity to 175 gigawatts by 2022.
The dedicated transmission lines, part of the so-called green corridor project, will transmit 20 gigawatts of power capacity from 34 solar parks across 21 Indian states, the government said Wednesday in a series of reports commissioned by Minister for Power, Coal and Mines Piyush Goyal. The reports were written by Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd. to develop plans to integrate renewable energy on the national grid.
The green-energy corridor is part of the country’s plans to boost transmission capacity to enable a seamless flow of electricity from clean electricity producing states to consuming states that face power shortages. New lines will also help manage intermittency challenges of renewable energy, especially as clean sources increase their share of power generation to almost 50 percent in some states.
The inter-state portion of the transmission investments will cost 80 billion rupees, while intra-state lines will require another 47.45 billion rupees, according to the government.
India will receive a soft loan of about one billion euros for the corridor’s development from the German development bank KfW, Goyal informed India’s lower house of Parliament last week.
Intra-state transmission under the plan will be funded through a 20 percent equity state held by the state government, 40 percent in the form of a grant from the National Clean Energy Fund and the soft loan accounting for the remaining 40 percent. The inter-state transmission schemes are to be funded as 30 percent equity by Power Grid Corp. and 70 percent as a soft loan, according to Goyal.