Powering India with new power generation technologies

Posted On: 17-02-2020

Among two verticals in the power generation industry, transmission and distribution have a larger market size out of the two. The India Power & Distribution Transformer Market is expected to reach around $74 billion by 2020, says Priya Sharma, Senior Research Analyst, Research and Consulting, 6Wresearch.

India is a land of many geographical features, from the mountain of the Himalayas in the north to the desert land of the west, to the relatively unexplored terrains of the North-East. While these very features have made providing power to all parts of the country a cumbersome task for many electricity providers in the past, substantial strides have been made in the area with many ambitious electrification projects getting the go-ahead in recent years. Growing power demand from multiple emerging cities of India along with the increasing installed power capacity is anticipated to create golden opportunities in the power sector industry in the coming years.

Power generation and transmission and distribution segments are two verticals in the power generation industry, with the latter having a larger market size out of the two. Retrofitting of aging equipment, the addition of superior technologies along with the need for creating a dedicated infrastructure for the transmission and distribution networks system for renewable energy-based power plants has created a high demand for transmission and distribution systems in the country. As a result, the Indian transmission and distribution equipment market is expected to reach around $74 billion by 2020, According to 6Wresearch. Moreover, both the generation and transmission segments are anticipated to undergo considerable growth in the coming years owing to efforts being made to accomplish the target of providing 24x7 affordable power across all the regions of the country. The power generation equipment market in India is expected to exhibit a CAGR of around 25 percent in FY2017-2021, while the transmission & distribution equipment market is expected to grow with a CAGR of around 27 percent during the same period.

India is the third-largest power producing country in the world, with a current installed capacity of around 350 GW as of December 2018. Power consumption in India is estimated to grow to 1,894.7 TWh by 2022 owing to the increasing per capita usage of electricity in the country. Growing concern towards the environment has resulted in an increase of adoption of green energy solutions into power generation practices. Solar, wind, nuclear cell, and biomass are the some of the most popular solutions in the renewable energy domain, out of which solar energy has the largest penetration in the country.

Emerging power generation techniques: Renewable energy
India holds huge potential for renewable energy production. The government's target to produce around 175 GW renewable energy by 2022 would radically reduce the country's dependence on fuels, such as oil and coal, and offer other advantages such as environmental protection, local employment opportunities, and investment inflows. The government of India is also offering supportive policies, proposed subsidies, and incentives which would continue to help in stimulating the solar and wind power sector in the country. The solar and wind verticals in India would continue to gain momentum in the coming years as it strives to fulfill the target of having cumulative solar installed capacity of around 100GW by 2022 and 60GW of wind installed capacity by the end of the same time period.

Upcoming power generation techniques: Nuclear energy
Increasing energy demand along with the climate-related concerns due to the increasing usage of fossil fuels has forced us to look for other power generation techniques. Nuclear power generation is one such technique. In fact, the government of India is aiming to achieve a nuclear power generation installed capacity of around 22GW by 2031. Uranium and thorium-based fuel cells are the most popularly used elements for power generation in India.

The growing size of the Indian power distribution and generation equipment market has several unseen opportunities to offer for competitors, both domestic and international. Growing opportunities across the renewable and nuclear energy sectors along with increasing power demand from state utilities and other government initiatives would further encourage investors to join hands with the government to power up the future of the country together.

About the author:
Priya Sharma is working as Senior Research Analyst in Research and Consulting division at 6Wresearch. She is tracking India's Power Distribution and Generation Equipment Market for the past 3 years. She is also actively looking at the power generation industry and assisting several global players in their market expansion strategies. She has completed her Bachelors of Technology from IP University in 2016.