Energetica India 89 - May 2020

SOLAR POWER Managing India’s Clean Energy Waste: A Roadmap for Solar and Storage Industry As distributed renewable energy sources such as solar PV and energy storage penetrate deep into the Indian electricity sector, it is necessary to prepare for managing the waste generated from these technologies. In addi- tion to being environmentally benign, the ‘reduce, reuse, and recover’ approach offers multiple socio-economic co-benefits. Dr. Akanksha Tyagi Research Analyst, Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) India is undergoing a clean energy transition. The government is consistently implementing policies to increase the share of renewables in the total electricity mix. Solar energy, in the form of rooftop and utility-scale solar, is at the forefront with signif- icant capacity addition over the past decade.The cumulative solar capacity has grown from 3 MW in 2009 to 31GW, as of September 2019, and is aimed to reach 100 GW by 2022 (Min- istry of New and Renewable Energy 2019). Energy storage is also garnering much attention with the growing share of renew- able energy in the grid to overcome generation intermittency. The Union Cabinet recently approved the National Mission on Transformative Mobility and Battery Storage that includes a five-year phased program to set up large scale battery and cell manufacturing Giga plants in India (Akshya Urja 2019). Since then, several renewable plus storage tenders have been an- nounced. The share of solar plus storage projects is only going to increase as India moves towards achieving the 100GW tar- get.In additional to the lead-acid batteries,which have been in use for energy storage and uninterrupted power supply solu- tions for many decades, alternative battery chemistries such as lithium and redox-flow are emerging for renewable energy applications. While the dramatic augmentation of solar and storage capacity ensures access to sustainable energy for all, it carries an im- pending issue of disposal and management at the end of their useful life. The expected useful working life of solar photovol- taic (PV) modules is between 25 and 30 years, after which they have to be discarded. Additionally, some of these products are also damaged during transportation, installation, operation, or natural calamities such as typhoons and floods. So, even though most of the installed projects are well short of decom- missioning, it would not be prudent to delay their waste man- agement. According to our analysis, the current 31 GW solar capacity alone would result in 107000 ton of waste by 2022. Interestingly, none of this waste would come from the expect- ed end-of-life of these modules. About 24000 tons would be created from damages during transportation and installation process. The remaining, about 82000 tons, would result from early failuresduring the plant operation phase.This number will continue to grow as more solar capacity is deployed in future. Similarly, for batteries, the expected life varies from three to 10 years depending on the battery chemistry.Further, several factors can result in an early life failure of batteries. Besides damage from improper handling during transportation and installation, different operational factors such as overheating, deep discharging, low or high surrounding temperature can also induce an early life failure of batteries. As these technologies continue to grow, so does the cumu- lative waste. In the absence of a regulatory framework, this entire waste would end up in landfills, adversely impacting the environment. Necessity and opportunity of waste management Dedicated waste management and recycling policies are crucial froman environmental and a resource management perspective. 35 energetica INDIA- May_2020