The world’s largest and first of its kind single location, co-located renewable energy storage project being set up by Greenko Group got off the ground at Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh with the first concrete pour by AP chief minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy.
The 5230MW renewable energy generation project with a pumped storage capacity of 10,800MWh per day (six hours per day of hydel power pumping and storage) is coming up at an investment of $3 billion by 2023.
This includes $1 billion investment in just the storage capacity and the remaining $2 billion in setting up 3000MW of solar power generation, 550 MW of wind energy generation and 1680MW of hydel power generation capacity, Mahesh Kolli, founder & joint managing director, Greenko Group.
Kolli said the project will play a key role in helping India achieve energy security and enabling global energy transition. It will not just cater to industry, where it has signed contracts with Arcelor Mittal for supply to its Gujarat facility, but also states like Bihar, Rajasthan and West Bengal (Damodar Valley Corporation). The storage project will also be used to produce green hydrogen.
The project is slated to help avoid 15 million tonnes of CO2 annually, which is equivalent to emissions from 3 million cars. The renewable energy storage capacity of 10,800 MWh will be able to integrate up to 6GW of wind and solar capacities. This means the project will have the capacity to integrate another 2,500MW of solar and wind generation capacities in addition to the total 3550MW of wind and solar capacities planned currently.
Greenko Group said the project is part of its plans to build an intelligent, low cost energy cloud storage platform of 50GWh capacity that is to be commissioned by 2025.
The Kurnool project is the first of the four energy storage projects that Greenko is planning in Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan at a total investment of $5 billion by 2025. While the projects in Karnataka and MP will be similar to the one coming up in AP, the Rajasthan one will be the largest with a 17,000 MWh storage capacity.
Greenko further plans to expand its energy storage capacities to 100GWh, which involves setting up of another four projects that includes one in Telangana, by 2027 along with green hydrogen production systems of 10GW by 2030. Greenko currently has an installed renewable energy capacity of around 7.5GW across wind, solar and hydro power in 15 states across the country and has another 10GW RE projects under development.
Greenko is majority owned by two of the largest global sovereign wealth funds — Government Investment Corporation (GIC) of Singapore and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) of UAE along with Orix Corporation of Japan.
