Global Economies Supporting Higher Penetration of Renewables through a Mix of Evolved Markets, and Optimizing Renewables and Storage Additions

The Capstone Workshop with ReNew Power focused on a few central issues about global electricity markets: evolution in the design and structure of wholesale markets, grid integration and infrastructure policies to support renewables penetration, the design of ancillary services and balancing, key transmission activities to support renewables, and battery storage technologies and policies. In support of these questions, the Capstone team identified and investigated five mature electricity markets with high renewables penetration: California, Nord Pool, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia, using publicly available market data, primary and secondary reports, and taking on interviews with key stakeholders and subject matter experts in each geography -- with an eye to applying the key lessons from each to the Indian context.

The Capstone team found a number of lessons, particularly that price stability can be offered through long-term bilateral contracts; market coordination can improve balancing and ancillary services; feed-in tariffs should be replaced after renewables generation increases, by more appropriate financial incentives; solar-storage hybrid systems can be effectively supported through intelligent policy design; and regional integration provides an effective balancing mechanism for grid integration of renewables. By pursuing such a course of action, India will be able to support an electricity system with a significant amount of renewables. The lessons learned were shared with key stakeholders at ReNew Power at the end of the semester and will be shared in their discussions with the Indian government.