India has pushed back by a year its plan for coal-fired power plants to lower output when solar generation is high, as regulators work out how to compensate for the higher costs of retrofitting entailed, documents reviewed by Reuters show.
Analysts say lack of flexible generation of coal power as India expands renewable capacity threatens to waste green investments, swell compensation costs and boost emissions from greater coal use that could otherwise have been avoided.
The move comes at a time when the world’s second largest user of coal is curbing solar output for lack of dedicated transmission lines, while coal-fired capacity wrestles with operational constraints.
Solar generators told to cut output as India’s coal plants could not ramp down could get compensation of as much as $76 million for the eight months ended December, energy think-tank Ember estimates, a cost that will be passed on to consumers.
Government officials blamed the delay of a year on the absence of rules to compensate coal plants for higher costs of maintenance and retrofitting needed to cut the minimum use rate to 40% from 55%, the minutes of a January 16 meeting showed.
Retrofitting coal plants would swell tariffs by as little as 0.28 rupees to 0.60 rupees per kilowatt-hour, versus 5.76 rupees to 6.04 rupees for battery storage, making flexible coal at least 10 times cheaper, the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) said at the meeting.
