Phase II of the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid &) Electric Vehicles (FAME) India is envisioned to introduce 7,000 e-buses across the country by 2024. This initiative has increased e-bus deployment at a rapid rate. However, the traditional bus operators are not yet familiar with the operational needs of e-buses. Unlike traditional buses that require refuelling, e-buses need frequent recharging to increase their operational range. This key difference calls for setting up the necessary electric infrastructure to meet the charging demand of e-buses.

Electric buses (e-buses) have caught the attention of the Indian public transport operators due to their ability to address the issues of rising greenhouse gas emissions, and air and noise pollution caused by conventional fuel buses. The Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid &) Electric Vehicles (FAME) II scheme envisages the deployment of 7,000 e-buses by 2024. In order to make this a seamless transition, an efficient charging infrastructure is imperative. Currently, depot-based plug-in charging is the most common method of charging e-buses in India.

The concept of SNEHA (Solution for Nutrition and Effective Health Access) was born in 2017 in the office of the Principal Secretary of the Department of Women and Child Development (DWCD) in Bengaluru, Karnataka. The challenge at hand was to expedite improvement in malnutrition management in the state. The National Family Health Survey (NFHS 4) report had recently been released, and it was sobering for the whole country.

“We need to go beyond the stubble burning issue and include road dust, and emissions from municipal waste, industries, and burning of plastic while dealing with air pollution,” said Shri Rana Gurjeet Singh, Cabinet Minister, Government for Punjab. He was speaking at ‘Vision: Clean Skies for Punjab’, organised by the Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP), one of India’s leading think tanks in Chandigarh.

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A differential pricing mechanism that calculates different pumping and generation prices for pumped-hydro energy storage (PHES) should be employed for its growth in India, recommends a recent study by the Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP).

On 29 November 2021, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) announced that the country’s total installed renewable energy (RE) capacity (including hydro) had crossed 150 gigawatts (GW), while also setting a new target of reaching 175 GW capacity of RE by 2022.

India plans to install 450 gigawatt (GW) of renewable energy (RE) generation capacity by 2030. However, RE is highly intermittent in nature and cannot be dispatched on the basis of real-time demand. Utility-scale energy storage technologies such as battery and pumped-hydro could be the answer to this problem. Pumped-hydro energy storage (PHES) is the oldest and most mature large-scale storage technology and accounts for 96% of global installed energy storage capacity.