A similar project was conceived in Nellore district

The Energy Department of Andhra Pradesh has tied up with a Hong Kong-based storage company, BYD, for developing a renewable energy storage facility on a pilot basis at Makkuva in Vizianagaram district.10 MW is the storage capacity planned under the pilot projectThis is part of the government’s endeavour to enable the villages to store solar and wind energy, and use them during any contingency.

Greenko Group is the Indian partner of the project, Energy Minister K. Kala Venkata Rao has said.Addressing the media here on Thursday, Mr. Rao said a similar project was conceived in Nellore district.

Projects in Anantapur

Such projects would be taken up to build mandal-level storage capacities and help villages have backup infrastructure for use during calamities, he added.The Cabinet, in its meeting recently, cleared the 160 MW wind-solar hybrid power project (40 MW wind and 120 MW solar), along with 40 MWh energy storage, in Anantapur district. It would be completed by the end of June 2019. The Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) is its developer.These projects would strengthen the State’s renewable energy portfolio at a time when efforts were being made to reduce dependence on thermal energy.

Incentive

Mr. Rao said, for better grid management, the department introduced Time-of-Day incentive of ?1 per unit for industrial and smart-metered consumers to help bring down the load curve, and, thereby incentivise off-peak hour consumption.

The agriculture subsidy support from the government to the utilities increased from approximately ?3,190 crore in 2014-15 to ?6,030 crore in 2018-19. A sum of ?6,000 crore was allocated in the budget for making reimbursement to the discoms, which had been instructed to release all pending agricultural connections (about 75,000), irrespective of the additional capital expenditure and subsidy burden. The Minister said the total installed capacity increased from 9,530 MW in 2014-15 to 17,520 MW in 2017-18, which included nearly 5,000 MW of wind and solar power.

Keeping the anticipated load growth on account of construction of the capital city, a capacity addition 2,560 MW was proposed by the year 2022, Mr. Rao added. Advisor K. Ranganatham; AP-Genco Managing Director and AP-Transco CMD K. Vijayanand; AP-Transco Joint Managing Directors Dinesh Paruchuri and P. Umapathi; and CMDs M.M. Nayak (SPDCL) and H.Y. Dora and AP-SEEDCO MD A. Chandra Sekhar Reddy were present.