The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) confirmed the technical and economic viability of integrating renewable energy into a grid with an advanced weather and power system modeling.
The report, titled GREENING THE GRID: Pathways to Integrate 175 Gigawatts of Renewable
Energy into India’s Electric Grid, Vol. I—National Study, says that India’s current power system is dominated with coal but has the flexibility to accommodate the variability associated with the renewable energy targets. 
“With renewable energy auction prices at record lows, an immense amount of renewable energy growth is anticipated to be added to India’s power system,” principal investigator Jaquelin Cochran, a manager in NREL’s Strategic Energy Analysis Center, said in a statement. “We wanted to provide a systematic way to plan for that. The results of our study can inform policy and regulatory decisions that support system flexibility and renewable energy investment in India.”
According to R&D Magazine, the researchers identified how the Indian power system production cost model is balanced every 15 minutes, the same time frame used by grid operators. This means that 160 GW of solar and wind capacity can serve 22 percent of India’s power demand and the system can manage the added variability of wind and solar without new, fast-ramping infrastructure.
