Optimizing Technology Mix for Power Generation in India through Technological Learning Considerations

The Indian Power Sector is increasing rapidly. It has few typical features that make it different from many developing countries. On the aspect of power generation potential, there exists beside coal and nuclear a huge potential of large hydro (84 GW), wind (20 GW) and small hydro (10 GW) based power generation in addition to potentials of solar, ocean and bio energy. Investigations of the history of different technologies and their key indicators e.g. plant cost and power generation efficiency, have shown that there is a continuous improvement in both the fields. The specific cost of technologies trends to decrease and their performance e.g. efficiencies increase with their cumulative capacity. For finding the effects of technological learning on the suitability of technologies at different points of time, the Indian power sector has been modeled. The objective was to find the optimum set of choices under dynamic conditions. A much widely used energy planning software MARKAL (MARket ALlocation) has been used for this purpose which operates with the bottom-up approach to deal with energy systems.