Contribution of Renewable Energy to India's Southern Grid

There is publicly available data on the daily contribution of renewable energy to the southern grid from May 11, 2010. Almost all of the renewable energy contribution into the southern grid come from hydroelectric and wind generation. We are aware of some grid connected solar energy projects coming online, but the capacity is too tiny right now to consider and moreover SRLDC does not report solar generation separately for us to track easily.

If we plot the renewable energy generation against the total energy generation generation we get the following chart (Data from May 11, 2010 to July 12 2014).

Southern Grid: Contribution of Renewable Energy (Click for a larger version)

The light blue series is the percentage contribution of  renewable energy to the total energy generation. It is plotted against the secondary (right) axis.

The records for each of the series from the chart are:

• Maximum hydro generation - 201.99 GWh on Aug 8, 2013
• Maximum wind generation - 125.13 GWh on Jun 25, 2014
• Maximum total renewable generation - 274.63 GWh on Aug 8, 2013
• Maximum % of renewable generation - 38.5 % on Aug 7, 2013

It can be seen that there were instances in the monsoon season of 2011 and 2013 where renewable energy generation touched more than 30% the grid energy generation. Maximum renewable generation happens typically during the monsoon season of south India because it coincides with both the wind season and the rainy season when reservoirs typically are getting full and local electricity boards maximizes the generation of cheap hydroelectric power rather than let reservoirs reach max capacity. This  copious hydro power generation can be seen as peaks in the red line. This is not seen in 2012 - the red line representing hydro power generation stays low (in fact dips) during the monsoon months. The reason for this was that 2011 and 2013 were above average monsoons with +2% and +6% departures from normal while the monsoon of 2012 was a below average monsoon with -7% departure from normal.

This can be seen in the following rainfall maps from IMD.

Rainfall map for the monsoon of 2011

Rainfall map for the monsoon of 2012

Rainfall map for the monsoon of 2013

So far this year (2014) the monsoons had been deficient, but the rains during the last two weeks give a glimmer of hope for the currently dire hydro power situation in southern India. We will revisit this subject at the end of 2014 monsoon season later this year.

Sources:
[1] Generation Data : http://srldc.org/
[2] Rainfall Maps : IMD
      - 2011 - http://www.imd.gov.in/section/nhac/dynamic/mon2011.jpg
      - 2012 - http://www.imd.gov.in/section/nhac/dynamic/mon2012.jpg
      - 2013 - http://www.imd.gov.in/section/hydro/dynamic/rfmaps/seasonal/mon2013.jpg