Cutting off hydro to spite solar

Putting off hydropower projects for the wrong reasons

It is almost as if the Power Division is cutting off its nose to spite its face. The institutional animosity against solar power is so strong that it has given falling demand due to solar power adoption by consumers as one of the reasons for delaying 1832 MW worth of three hydropower projects, which were not included in the Indicative Generation Capacity Expansion Plan 2025-2035. The projects failed to achieve Financial Closure with the Private Power Infrastructure Board, though they had all been issued letters of support. The Power Division does not seem to like renewable energy, and thus does not seem to want any reduction of the national oil import bill. Hydropower, like solar power, would have been generated without any oil imports. Linking solar power to declining demand for grid electricity is powerfully reminiscent of the bureaucrat who objected to the burden of Tarbela Dam on the ground that the country would not  be able to use the power generated.

It is true that hydropower, like solar power, is not permanently available, being generated only during the flood season, but it changes thermal power from the main source of power to a back-up. The possibility of huge storage facilities, first conceived for solar power, can be conceived for hydropower and other renewable sources (such as wind), and retain a useful role for the grid. The Power Division now seems devoted to keeping the IPPs afloat rather facilitating the consumer, with the paradoxical result that it has driven tariffs up so high that solarization has become a no-brainer. The only incentive to remaining on the grid is for back-up, a need which will disappear as soon as storage becomes affordable and less problematic.

A sign of the times is the request by a Captive Power Producer, Monoo Energy, which has applied for a change in ist licence allowing it to install a 7.4 MW solar plant, which would allow it to convert its present 4.6 MW thermal plant into a backup. This means that it can reduce its average tariff, and thus combat the main problem currently affecting the power sector: high tariffs. The government greatly reduced loadshedding, but its solution involved elevating tariffs, which are making consumers scream. The government must be ready to join the switch, which consumers are making not out of some animus against the Power Division, but because of high tariffs.