NEW DELHI: The steep fall in solar tariffs may have delighted discoms and other power consumers, but it is also having unintended consequences. To provide uninterrupted power, storage batteries are required alongside the solar or wind farm, but such batteries do not come cheap.Experts estimate their cost at around $450 per kwH — thus including storage adds considerably to the cost of a project and pushes the tariff up. None of the solar plants operating in the country so far include storage, but transfer all the power they produce immediately to the grid. “The lowest solar tariff has fallen to Rs 2.44 per kwH (at an auction in May at the Bhadla Solar Park in Rajasthan),” said Ashwini Kumar, managing director, SECI. “Even with VGF, a project that includes storage can never hope to match it.

Source: Economic Times July 19, 2017 18:56 UTC