India will soon invite global bids for battery storage projects totalling 4,000 MWhr (megawatt hours), Union Power Minister R K Singh said on Thursday. He made the announcement while addressing the US India Strategic Partnership Forum and industry leaders in a Virtual Energy Industry Roundtable, the Singh added that a battery project of 12 gigawatt hours (GWhr) will be set up in Ladakh.
“In the near future, India will have bids to invite global and domestic manufacturers for developing battery storage…India will soon have bids for 4,000 MWhr Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS)…and later will take up 12 GWhr project in Ladakh,” the statement quoted Singh as saying.
India has set an ambitious target of having 175 GW renewable energy (RE) capacity by 2022 and 450 GW by 2030.
At present, India has 100 GW installed solar and wind capacity and after adding hydro, the total installed renewable capacity is 146 MW, he said.
Another 63 GW of renewable capacity is under construction, Singh said. The minister also informed the conference that India would be inviting bids for green hydrogen in the next 3-4 months to pave the way for viable usage of hydrogen as fuel.
“We have been working continuously to increase our pumped hydro storage capacity… the world needs to come up with more number of eletrolyzers, battery storage facilities, etc to bring economies of scale in these technologies and make these commercially viable,” he said.
