A background note can be accessed here: Cabinet Approves Green Energy Corridor III to Connect 135 GW of Renewable Power
Green Energy Corridor III (GEC-III) is intended to create transmission capacity for 135 GW of renewable power while renewable generation itself will be developed by multiple public and private developers over time. Should transmission capacity be built ahead of expected generation to avoid future bottlenecks, or should transmission and generation projects be planned and executed as a coordinated pipeline?
India should avoid the two extremes of building transmission only after generation is committed and building the entire network far ahead of generation. Transmission must be anticipatory, because its lead time is generally longer than that of solar and wind projects, but execution should follow a coordinated and periodically updated generation–transmission–storage pipeline.
Waiting until generation is commissioned risks stranded renewable capacity, congestion and curtailment. Conversely, building large corridors solely against projected nameplate capacity creates utilisation and consumer-cost risks if projects are delayed, relocated or their technology mix changes.
A suitable approach would be staged anticipatory transmission: establish the strategic backbone ahead of generation, but trigger subsequent augmentation against credible project milestones, connectivity commitments and updated system studies. Planning should also move beyond the quantum of capacity connected to consider coincident injection patterns and corridor utilisation over time. Solar, complementary wind, storage and non-solar-hour connectivity can share transmission capacity where technically feasible. Generation, storage and transmission should increasingly be co-optimised rather than planned sequentially.
The scheme provides for 50 GWh of battery energy storage alongside transmission infrastructure. What is the case for treating storage as part of publicly planned grid infrastructure rather than relying primarily on market participants to develop storage where and when it becomes commercially viable?
Storage is both a market asset and a system asset; treating it exclusively as either would be a mistake. Where batteries undertake energy arbitrage or commercial balancing, competitive markets should determine investment and operation. But strategically located storage can create benefits that a merchant investor may not fully capture: avoided renewable curtailment, congestion relief, improved transmission utilisation, peak support, ancillary services and, importantly, deferral of transmission augmentation.
This creates a clear system-value component. The 50 GWh provision in GEC-III should therefore be viewed not simply as additional battery capacity, but as an opportunity to integrate storage directly into transmission planning.
Public planning need not imply public ownership. The Central Electricity Authority (CEA) and State Transmission Utilities (STUs) can identify locations and required services, while capacity is competitively procured from private developers through transparent contracts. India should move towards system-planned but competitively delivered storage, with procurement recognising transmission-deferral and congestion-relief value alongside energy and ancillary-service revenues. This approach captures public-good benefits while retaining competition, innovation and private investment discipline.
The corridor is designed to connect renewable-rich regions, including Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, to the wider transmission system. How should India assess the economic value of locating renewable generation in resource-rich regions when the resulting transmission requirement can substantially affect the cost and reliability of delivering that electricity to demand centres?
The cheapest renewable electricity at the generator bus is not necessarily the cheapest electricity delivered to consumers. Resource-rich regions such as Rajasthan and Gujarat offer excellent solar and wind resources and economies of scale, and exploiting them remains economically rational. But as renewable penetration rises, the relevant metric should shift from generation tariff to system-adjusted delivered cost.
That calculation should include generation cost, transmission investment and losses, storage and balancing requirements, expected curtailment, congestion and the reliability contribution of the resource. This does not imply moving renewable projects indiscriminately closer to demand: superior resource quality can justify substantial transmission investment. But there will be cases where a somewhat higher-cost renewable project nearer a load centre produces a lower total-system cost than another remote project requiring major network augmentation. India should therefore evaluate renewable zones and transmission jointly through locational economics. Solar, wind, storage and flexible demand should be co-optimised, with complementary resources sharing transmission wherever feasible. The objective should be the lowest cost of reliably delivering clean electricity to consumers.
GEC-III should be viewed as an opportunity to extend this approach to coordinated planning of renewable generation, transmission, storage and flexible demand, with investment decisions guided by reliability and the lowest total system cost.