Renewable energy sources for peak load demand management in India

In developing country such as India, demand for power is increasing day by day; especially peak load demand management is becoming crucial. This paper highlights the gap between peak load power demand and availability of power at the regional level, furthermore proposes the suitability of power generation from renewable sources to fill the gap. The problem is formulated for the optimum allocation of the various renewable energy options to meet the peak load demand at the regional level of India, based upon the application of a linear programming algorithm, considering various constraints. Due to the geological profile, potential of various renewable energy sources such as, small hydro power, solar photovoltaic, wind power, co-generation and biomass energy is varying from region to region. A computational result indicates that the power generated by renewable resources is quite suitable to meet the peak load demand and in fact some of regions have the potential, which can be transferred to the other regions utilizing the existing transmission line network. (author)