As the government continues to focus on growing the share of renewable energy in the country, almost 15,000 MW of wind-solar hybrid capacity is expected to emerge over the next five years, Crisil said. Out of these 15,000 MW, works on approximately 10,000 MW are either under construction or are being tendered and are scheduled to start feeding the grid by fiscal year 2024.
As part of the hybrid option, the system is designed using solar panels and small wind turbines for generating electricity.
"We expect the hybrid market to grow and evolve as the number of projects and developers who seek to unlock value from the hybrid increases. Riding on strong support from the central public sector undertaking Solar Energy Corporation of India and several state governments, we expect nearly 15,000 MW of hybrid capacity will come up over the next five years," Crisil Director Rahul Prithiani said.
According to the rating agency, since solar energy generation tends to peak during the day and wind energy at night, the resulting intermittent supply impacts grid resilience, making discoms reluctant to purchase power from stand-alone wind and solar projects.
"In the hybrid option, however, these two energy sources complement each other, which could help overcome the problems of variability of generation and grid security, and thereby discoms' reluctance," Crisil said.
As of March 2020, India had 37,690 MW of stand-alone wind power and 35,000 MW of solar power.
