Tata Power creates new arm to set up 10,000 microgrids in India

Tata Power on Monday said it will create an arm, TP Renewable Microgrid, to set up 10,000 microgrids to provide power to five million homes across the country. The TP Renewable Microgrid would be set up in collaboration with the Rockefeller Foundation, which will provide technical support to the offshoot for achieving its objective.

However, the Rockefeller Foundation will not have any stake in the venture. The TP Renewable Microgrid represents important scaling up of efforts to provide access to affordable, reliable and clean electricity in India, and will serve as a model for expanding access to more than 800 million people who are without power worldwide, a Tata Power statement said.

"TP Renewable Microgrid anticipates setting up of 10,000 microgrids through 2026 to provide power to millions across India and help eradicate energy poverty," it said. According to a statement by scaling up an innovative microgrid model to be implemented in collaboration with Smart Power India (SPI) and the Institute for Transformative Technologies, TP Renewable Microgrid will provide clean power to nearly five million households, directly impacting lives of 25 million people.

Rural businesses and households continue to rely on alternative sources to power daily needs - with more than 40 percent of rural enterprises in states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh relying on non-grid sources of power such as diesel, it added. The TP Renewable Microgrid is expected to reduce carbon emissions by one million tonnes per year as well as diesel consumption by 57 million liters yearly.

The TP Renewable Microgrid will be operated and managed by Tata Power with about 11,000 MW of installed power generation capacity and over 2.6 million customers under management across Delhi, Ajmer, and Mumbai. “...Once at scale, TP Renewable Microgrid anticipates supporting 1,00,000 rural enterprises, creating 10,000 new green jobs, and providing irrigation for over 4,00,000 local farmers,” said Tata Power CEO Praveer Sinha in a statement.

SPI, which was launched by The Rockefeller Foundation in 2015, has built microgrids that provide clean, distributed electricity to more than 200 villages in rural India. “We have an unprecedented opportunity to transform the lives of millions of people in India by providing access to power,” said Rajiv J Shah, President of The Rockefeller Foundation.

In addition to the building, owning, and operating microgrids in India, TP Renewable Microgrid intends to provide ancillary microenterprise services to benefit communities.

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