Union Power Minister, R K Singh on Thursday said that India will come out with a tender for setting up 2,000 megawatt hour (MWh) of grid-scale battery energy storage system (BESS). This will aid in better grid management while accommodating renewable energy (RE) sources.
Speaking at the first EU-India Green Hydrogen Forum, Singh, who also holds the charge for New & Renewable Energy Ministry, said, “I am adding storage. We came out with a bid for 1,000 MWh. We will come with another bid for 2,000 MWh storage. The quantity of storage which we will be adding, nobody else will be adding because I want RTC green energy. I am serious about energy transition.”
Singh had told BusinessLine on Wednesday that his Ministry is working on the details of the tender and will come out with it soon. The Minister has said that this will be one of the world’s largest battery storage tender.
Round-the-clock supply
Gird-scale BESS allows power utilities to store energy and deploy it later depending on demand, variability, etc. It becomes crucial for India as the country will need to accommodate 500 GW of non-fossil fuel power requiring grid operators to handle intermittency as well as supply round-the-clock (RTC) power through RE sources.
There are various battery chemistries available or under testing including lithium-ion, lead-acid, redox flow, and molten salt (including sodium-based).
Speaking at the forum, the Minister emphasised that India is one of the best destinations for the European Union (EU) to invest for a clean energy transition.
Manufacturing market
“We have an advantage that we are a huge market so manufacturing will come here. We will come out with a production linked incentive (PLI) scheme for manufacturing eletrolysers here because we have a huge need for them in the domestic market. We will come out with a PLI for manufacturing batteries as we now have huge RE capacities,” Singh added.
European Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson said, “We aim to be at 45 per cent renewable energy in our mix by 2030. This is significantly more than our current agreed target of 32 per cent and includes an additional 10 million tonnes of renewable hydrogen, bringing our goal to 20 million by 2030.”
She said that at the EU level, they are expecting investments in the range of €320–460 billion, which includes investment to cover all parts of the value chain-renewable electricity production, electrolysers, hydrogen transport, storage and distribution.
“India has a great potential for green hydrogen and green ammonia projects, owing to high solar irradiation. We have several ports to export the fuel too,” Simson added.