Vineet Mittal has spent years evangelising clean energy, and the Avaada Group chairman has the solar modules and cells to show for it. His next act is bigger: utility-scale battery energy storage systems, or BESS — giant banks of batteries that soak up power when the sun shines and release it when the grid needs it, keeping supply steady and stable. Avaada’s first big play is a 2.5-GWh BESS paired with a 1.6-GW solar plant in Rajasthan, an investment of some Rs 5,000 crore by one estimate. And there’s much more in the pipeline.
Mittal has plenty of company. With the market opportunity across the value chain pegged at Rs 5 lakh crore, India Inc’s biggest houses are piling into BESS. Many units are still on the drawing board and some are being commissioned, but from Adani Green Energy to JSW Energy, NTPC Green Energy, Tata Power Renewable Energy and ReNew, everyone wants a piece of the storage chain.
The prize is sizeable. India is targeting 236-260 GWh of storage capacity by 2032, which means 40-50 GWh of installations every year between 2026 and 2030. The economics, though, are sobering. Indian manufacturers produce at around $80/kWh against Chinese imports at $50-60/kWh, the gap explained by immature supply chains, thin vendor ecosystems and a shortage of skilled hands.
Pairing storage with solar adds Rs 4-6 per kWh to base solar costs of Rs 1.8-2. And for all the announcements, only three companies — Adani New Energy, Reliance Industries and Waaree Energies — are pursuing complete value-chain integration, according to Bineet Banka of Nomura Global Research.
The front-runners are moving fast. Adani Green has commissioned 3.5 GWh of battery storage in Gujarat, the first leg of a plan to hit 10 GWh by March 2027 and 50 GWh in five years. The investment, analyst say, could be upwards of Rs 50,000 crore. ReNew’s hybrid battery project in Andhra Pradesh, at about 2 GWh, ranks among the biggest BESS units under development.
JSW Energy, true to its strategy of straddling the energy value chain, is committing capital to storage as well: the target is 30 GW of generation and an ambitious 40 GWh of storage by 2030. Reliance has set up a 50 MWh-a-year pilot line for battery cells that, the company says, can be scaled to commercial production.
Then there are the value-chain climbers. The Waaree Group began with solar modules, moved into cells and, for the last couple of years, founder Hitesh Doshi — a famously hands-on entrepreneur — has been building out BESS. Waaree Energy Storage Solutions envisages 20 GWh of capacity, including battery cells and packs, within five years; the roughly Rs 10,000 crore committed so far will take it to 5 GWh. Given the group’s execution record in solar cells, where it is now a market leader, few would bet against it delivering.
The old battery hands aren’t sitting out either. Amara Raja Energy & Mobility’s upcoming lithium-ion BESS facility will have a capacity of about 10 GWh, while Exide Energy Solutions, betting on soaring demand for the cells at the heart of every BESS, is setting up 12 GWh.
The revolution, clearly, has begun charging.
Source: The Financial Express
