The projects will would provide employment to approximately 13,500 people during the construction period. Torrent intends to execute these projects over a period of five years.
These projects are planned to provide a minimum of six hours of energy storage on a daily basis.
“Pumped storage hydro is an established, proven and cost-effective technology for longer duration storage solution,” the company statement said.
The projects would be executed at three sites identified by Torrent namely Karjat (3,000 MW) in Raigarh District, Maval, (1,200 MW) and Junnar (1,500 MW) in Pune District.
"The projects are planned to provide a minimum of six hours of energy storage on a daily basis," Torrent Power said in a press statement.
The share of renewable power, which is intermittent in nature, is rapidly increasing in the grid. This necessitates energy storage for load management and meeting peak demand.
Pumped Storage Hydro is an established, proven and cost-effective technology for firm, flexible and dispatchable power. PSH is a configuration of two water reservoirs at different elevations.
Water is pumped to the upper reservoir at the time of excess power when it is the cheapest. At the time of demand when power is expensive, water flow from upper reservoir to lower reservoir generates power with a hydraulic turbine. PSH is a much superior solution than Battery for energy storage as it is cheaper, has a longer life of 40 years, provides longer duration storage of 6 to 10 hours with feasibility of multiple cycle operations during the day.
Torrent Power currently has an aggregate installed generation capacity of 4.1 GW, which consists largely of clean generation sources such as gas (2.7 GW) and renewables (1.07 GW).
It also has Renewable capacity of 0.7 GW under development. Torrent’s growth focus in Power Generation remains on Renewables.
"To complement its growing portfolio of renewables and distribution, Torrent is strategically entering the storage space to fulfill the void left in the grid by intermittent renewable power," the company said.