New Delhi: Torrent Power on Tuesday inked an initial pact with the Maharashtra government for the development of three pumped storage hydro projects of 5,700 MW capacity, entailing an investment of about Rs 27,000 crore. These projects are likely to generate 13,500 jobs.
Projects would be executed at three sites identified by Torrent — Karjat (3,000 MW) in the Raigarh district, Maval (1,200 MW) and Junnar (1,500 MW) in the Pune district, a company statement said.
According to the statement, all the sites are off-stream and the projects are planned to provide a minimum of six hours of energy storage on a daily basis.
“Torrent Power has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Government of Maharashtra for the development of three Pumped Storage Hydro (PSH) Projects of 5,700 MW capacity in the State of Maharashtra,” it said.
The projects would entail an investment of about Rs 27,000 crore and would provide employment to about 13,500 people during the construction period, it stated.
Torrent intends to execute these projects over a period of five years. The share of renewable power, which is intermittent in nature, is rapidly increasing in the grid.
This necessitates energy storage for load management and meeting peak demand. Pumped Storage Hydro is an established, proven and cost-effective technology for firm, flexible and dispatchable power.
The PSH is a configuration of two water reservoirs at different elevations. Water is pumped to the upper reservoir at the time of excess power when it is the cheapest.
At the time of demand when power is expensive, water flow from the upper reservoir to the lower reservoir generates power with a hydraulic turbine.
The PSH is a much superior solution than Battery for energy storage as it is cheaper, has a longer life of 40 years and provides longer duration storage of 6 to 10 hours with the feasibility of multiple cycle operations during the day.
Torrent Power currently has an aggregate installed generation capacity of 4.1 GW, which consists largely of clean generation sources such as gas (2.7 GW) and renewables (1.07 GW). It also has a Renewable capacity of 0.7 GW under development.
Torrent’s growth focus in power generation remains on renewables.
To complement its growing portfolio of renewables and distribution, Torrent is strategically entering the storage space to fulfil the void left in the grid by intermittent renewable power.
Torrent Power, with a turnover of Rs 25,694 crore (about USD 3 billion), is the integrated power utility of the diversified Torrent Group with group revenues of Rs 37,500 crore (about USD 4.50 billion) and group market cap of Rs 87,000 crore (about USD 10.50 billion).
It is one of the largest companies in the country’s power sector with a presence across the entire power value chain of generation, transmission, and distribution.
