The initiative combines solar PV, battery storage, smart transformer and energy management system in a microgrid at St. Xavier’s School in central New Delhi.

The project under Tata Power Delhi Distribution Ltd is aimed to investigate the role of local distributed energy resource generation in increasing the consumption of renewable energy and improving the resilience of the energy system.

Partners in the project – part of the IElectrix (Indian and European Local Energy CommuniTies for Renewable Integration and Energy Transition) initiative – include French DSO Enedis, Schneider Electric, the Schneider initiated research collaboration Odit-e and the European consultancy Geco Global.

Funding is provided from the Horizon Europe facility.

The IElectrix project was launched in 2019 with a focus on increasing the integration of renewable energies into the distribution network with the creation of local energy communities and smart distributions systems.

The consortium includes sixteen partners from nine countries, with four large scale demonstrators. In addition to India, these are in Austria, Germany and Hungary.

Features of the New Delhi demonstrator include investigating the roles of demand side management in boosting the local consumption of renewables and of islanding in improving the resilience of the local energy system.

At the launch of IElectrix, Praveer Sinha, CEO of Tata Power, envisaged the demonstrator would be a game changer for the Indian grids, while Sanjay Banga, then CEO of Tata Power-DDL and now President T&D of Tata Power, said it would address key challenges in demand side management, system resilience and increased renewable consumption.

IElectrix runs until the end of October 2022. Progress with the other pilots is reported to be being made and among early results, battery energy storage has demonstrated support for grid overloads and the reduction of network losses in the German pilot.