New Delhi: Former Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar took charge on Tuesday as the Power minister in the newly formed Modi government at the Centre. On his first day in office, the newly appointed Power Minister held a meeting with officials and public sector unit (PSU) chiefs to discuss enhancing the country’s power generation, transmission, and battery storage capacities, amid soaring power demands.
“The meeting focused on transmission capacity addition, storage capacity addition, and also generation capacity addition. We talked about battery storage, essentially storage capacity,” a power ministry official who attended the meeting said.
Lal, who took over the reins from his predecessor Raj Kumar Singh in a ceremony also attended by Minister of State for Power Shripad Yesso Naik, emphasized the need for substantial capacity enhancement to meet the escalating power demand. The government has set ambitious targets to set up an additional 80 GW of coal-fired capacity by 2032 and to integrate 500 GW of non-fossil generation capacity by 2030 into the grid.
To support intermittent renewable energy and ensure grid stability, battery storage will play a critical role. In light of this, last September, the union cabinet approved Rs 3,760 crore viability gap funding for battery energy storage systems.
Inducted into the Union Cabinet, BJP veteran Khattar is now set to begin his new innings as a parliamentarian and Union minister.
Khattar joined the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) as a permanent member in 1977 and stayed with it for 17 years before he was made a member of the BJP in 1994.
