Vulnerability assessment of thermal power plants in India under water stress conditions

Manas Ranjan Panda, Arjun Tyagi, C.T. Dhanya, Ashu Verma and Anshuman Swain

Energy, 2023, vol. 276, issue C

Abstract: Economic development has put tremendous demand for energy worldwide, including in India. For instance, during the six years, i.e., 2011–2017, the power production by coal-fueled thermal power plants in India has increased by 64.82%. Such a condition has led to an enormous increase in the demand for freshwater use in these thermal power plants. In this study, we analyze the vulnerability of 174 coal-fueled thermal power plants to the freshwater availability trends in India. The power plants have been classified according to their power generation capacity ratio using past data. The ‘Variable Infiltration Capacity’ (VIC) land surface model has been used to generate the grid-scale water availability trends for assessing the thermal power plant's vulnerability in production capacity in different river basins. We considered the total surface-water availability and availability trend of the river basin to study the vulnerability of the thermal power plants as per the freshwater demand during the power generation process. Our results suggest that about 30% of India's total coal-fueled thermal power plants are in regions with negative trends of freshwater availability. Overall, our study indicates the need for an integrated basin-level approach to improve India's water management policy for thermal energy production.

Keywords: Thermal power plant; Land surface model (LSM); Freshwater availability; Vulnerability study; Grid-scale (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:276:y:2023:i:c:s0360544223009477

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2023.127553

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