Recent Blogs

Wind Repowering in India

25 GW of India's wind fleet is ageing. That's not a problem — it's the opportunity.

At Windergy India 2026 in Chennai last week, Union Minister Pralhad Joshi said the government is preparing a strategy to repower roughly 25 GW of ageing wind capacity, as India pushes from ~59 GW today toward 100 GW by 2030. Read more at: https://lnkd.in/gntKfMia

Many of the country's best wind sites still run first-generation turbines: sub-MW machines, low hub heights, outdated controls. Swap them for modern turbines and the same land, the same wind resource and the same grid connection can deliver several times the energy.

Solar + BESS Auction

Interesting to see the recent RSDCL Pugal auction results (2.45 GW Solar + 6.4 GWh BESS), but looking closely at the tender mechanics reveals a few structural realities worth highlighting: 
1. The 28% CUF Cap: The annual Capacity Utilization Factor ceiling isn't just about limiting energy yields—it's a crucial grid-protection mechanism to prevent over-sizing solar arrays and managing over-injection spikes at the point of interconnection. 
2. Availability is not the same as Dispatchability: The mandate for 95% monthly BESS availability simply means the hardware infrastructure (inverters, HVAC, and racks) is online, healthy, and ready. It does not guarantee that power is actively dispatchable at any given moment. 

Why Gujarat’s New BESS Policy Makes Battery Investments Bankable

I have been working on ADB funded wind repowering project, and the new hybrid power plant will contain wind, solar and BESS. GERC (Grid Interactive Battery Energy Storage System) Regulations, 2026 released in October 2026 is timely because it provides a comprehensive framework for co-located and standalone storage integration. In the following discussion, I will limit to solar + BESS for a captive plant. Among its key provisions, Regulation 15.2 stands out: it permits solar assets to deploy a BESS and inject stored energy into the grid past legacy banking limits, provided the energy is matched and credited within the exact same 15-minute time block.

My experimentation with Claude Cowork

Weekend tryst with Claude Cowork — a very positive experience and surprisingly productive.
This article shares my hands-on experiment using Claude Cowork to build an end-to-end automated workflow for daily wind measurement data: extracting emailed CSV files, consolidating the data, monitoring for anomalies, and presenting the results on a dashboard. The most interesting takeaway was how quickly a recurring manual process could be turned into reusable skills, Python scripts, and a scheduled workflow.
Got a lot accomplished in just a few hours — definitely worth experimenting with.

𝗘𝘅𝗲𝗰𝘂𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗦𝘂𝗺𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘆

Site Selection for Green GW-Scale AI Data Centers: A Multicriteria Approach

The rapid growth of artificial intelligence is driving unprecedented demand for large-scale computing infrastructure. Hyperscale AI data centers now require gigawatt-scale power capacity, extremely high reliability, and access to sustainable energy sources. Selecting the right location for such facilities is therefore no longer a simple real-estate decision—it is a complex infrastructure planning challenge.

To address this, we have developed a multicriteria methodology for site selection of Green GW-scale AI Data Centers that integrates power systems, digital infrastructure, environmental considerations, and long-term resilience.

A Structured Multicriteria Framework

Our approach evaluates potential sites across several key dimensions.

AI eats services

We’ve heard “AI will eat software.” The bigger story:AI is going to eat services.

By “services,” I mean asset-light, information-driven businesses whose core moat is business process logic embedded in software — underwriting, booking, logistics coordination, CRM, claims processing.

AI Eats Information Work — and Services Are Information Work.

My thesis is that AI will eat the legacy services companies—insurance (health, auto, property, life), CRM, e-Commerce, travel & leisure, banking, brokerage, legal, real estate and a lot of others.

Sustainable AI Data Centers

Sustainability Design Principles and Performance Targets for AI Data Center

The explosion of large language model (LLM)–based artificial intelligence has created an unprecedented surge in the demand for compute infrastructure, leading to the rapid development of giga-watt-scale AI data centers. As part of IWE’s ongoing assignment, sustainability has been established as a foundational pillar of design—ensuring that the environmental footprint of these facilities remains as low as possible even as their computational footprint grows exponentially.

The following sustainability design principles guide all design and procurement decisions:

  1. Minimize the carbon footprint of electricity generation used to power the data center

Long duration energy storage

This blog will list what grids planning in terms of energy storage systems to increase the penetration of renewable energy--wind and solar power.

INDIA

Details of the CEA advisory

"To facilitate the large-scale integration of renewable energy, the CEA has recommended that renewable energy implementing agencies and state utilities include co-located ESSs in upcoming solar tenders.

The advisory specifies that storage capacity equivalent to 10 percent of the installed solar project capacity, with a minimum duration of two hours, should be mandated. Further, the tender documents should include a clear compliance mechanism to ensure the availability of stored energy during non-solar hours.

Energy Related GHG Emissions as of end of 2023

The following statistics were collected in early 2024 for Global energy-related (not just electricity) CO2 emissions:

  1. In 2023 the total emissions were 37.4 billion tons
  2. It increased in 2023 by 410 million tons (1.1% rise).  In 2022 the increase was 490 million tons.
  3. 40% of the rise in 2023 can be attributed to an exceptional shortfall in hydropower due to extreme droughts in China, the US, and several other economies

Source: https://www.energyglobal.com/special-reports/04032024/growth-of-clean-energy-limited-rise-in-global-emissions-in-2023-reports-iea/

 

Wind energy statistics 2023-24

Offshore wind statistics, as of the end of 2024

https://www.offshorewind.biz/2025/05/02/offshore-wind-grows-by-11-gw-in-2024-with-31-projects-commissioned-wfo-report/ 

Total global offshore wind capacity: 78.5 GW

--x--

 

Cost of LDES

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/thermal-and-compressed-air-storage-cheaper-than-lithium-ion-batteries-for-8/717990/

https://www.pnnl.gov/projects/esgc-cost-performance/download-reports 

 

US 3Q of 2024