India has prioritised increasing the share of renewable energy (RE) based power generation capacity for several years. According to India’s renewable energy (RE) targets, the RE share will increase by 175 GW of installed capacity, including 100 GW of solar and 60 GW of wind, up from 9 GW of solar and 29 GW of wind installed in early 2017. Due to invariable nature of renewable energy resources, because of diurnal and seasonal variations, the impacts on grid are much higher than perceived impacts.  The reliable and effective grid integration of renewables becomes more challenging  with problems of the relatively weak Indian grid such as high line losses, load shedding, low voltages at the distribution tail end, high variation in frequency, lack of adequate reserves, flexible generation and effective demand forecasting.

The current COVID 2019 outbreak has also impacted the ongoing wind  and solar power projects across the Asia-Pacific markets. The extend of coronavirus impact on these markets is key to future growth of renewable sector. Prior to virus outbreak, global investors had been active in Asia Pacific renewable projects, offering developers access to cash at competitive rate of interest. However, if the outbreak evolves into financial crises funding may be harder to secure leading to reduced competitiveness of renewables.

In the backdrop, the webinar will gather industry experts, policy makers and institutions in grid operation to deliberate discussions on the present state of the sector, concerns of wind/solar power generators under the impact of COVID 2019, concerns of grid operators when it comes to integrating high levels of variable renewables and ways to mitigate such challenges through effective grid integration of renewables The discussion will also address the steps towards initialising forecasting and scheduling of renewables in the country.