Abstract:
The Small Hydro Power (SHP) is reliable, environment friendly and sustainable energy
resources among other renewable energy resources for the geographically remote areas. It is
necessary to maintain the growth of SHP as the electricity demand is increasing and also to reduce
the carbon emission SHP can play an important role. In recent years there has been a fast growth
in the renewable energy sector but the growth in SHP is not as same as the other renewable
energies. The impact of other renewable energies on SHP need to be analyzed to see the factors
that are responsible for the decline in growth of SHP.
In the present time the main focus is on the renewable energy power development as
renewable energy is the solution to the environmental problems and also the solution of energy
deficit in country. The growth of renewable energy is significant in the past decade but it is seen
that each renewable energy growth is not the same. To provide electricity in the remote areas
SHP plays a crucial role, so proper policies should be made to promote the SHP. Power
generation from the intermittent energy sources is uncertain by its nature and the primary source
of energy, for instance wind, cannot be gathered and used when desired so SHP can also be a
solution to this problem. The main advantage of SHP is that the power is generally available on
demand since the flow of water can be controlled and it can also help in meeting the peak and
intermittent energy demand.
Under this dissertation work, impact on SHP due to other renewable energy sources has
been studied. Government policy of various states in order to analyze the effect of policy on the
growth of renewable energy. The generic tariff policy of SERCs of various years is also studied
to identify what are the reasons and factors responsible for increase in tariff of one renewable
energy and decrease in tariff of other renewable energy. Regression analysis is done to establish
a relationship between a dependent variable i.e. Renewable energy share and two independent
variables i.e. Policy and tariff. The results are analyzed to see whether these have a positive or
negative impact on the growth of renewable energy and also the significance of the impact is
analyzed. The overall growth of renewable energy is good, but the situation of Small Hydro
power is not as good as compared to the other renewable energy resources. The regression
analysis of all the five states has common trend that the change in policy has negative impact on
Small Hydro Power and other than the state of Karnataka the tariff also has a negative coefficient
which implies that it has negative impact on growth of small hydropower