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India now has too much electricity — and it has a cost

<p>With the successful push for tapping the renewable energy, India, which once faced electricity shortage now has too much of it. India&rsquo;s gross electricity capacity is much higher than the demand. &ldquo;For a change, shortfalls have fallen dramatically and there is talk of &ldquo;surplus&rdquo; power,&rdquo; a report by Brookings India said. However, as every electricity grid operates in a balance between supply and demand, usually with a slight surplus of capacity to meet eventualities and uncertainty&mdash;too much surplus becomes expensive, the report warned. One the biggest problems could be having a surplus average energy but not having surplus capacity all the time.</p> <p>The challenge is also the targeted 175 GW of RE is disproportionately concentrated in a handful of states. Karnataka today already has almost 5 GW of solar and more of wind, far ahead of its targets. &ldquo;The entire systems planning has to shift from one of managing scarcity to managing surplus, at least for parts of the day or year,&rdquo; the report said. The problem of higher supply of power as compared to demand was also highlighted by NITI Aayog.</p>