Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) has awarded a 500MW/1,000MWh stand-alone battery storage system capacity contract in a reverse auction recently conducted.
Special-purpose provider JSW Renew Energy Five, a subsidiary of electricity producer JSW Energy's renewable energy business, won the bid.
India may need to deploy as much as 160GWh of energy storage systems to help integrate a planned 500GW of renewable energy by 2030, according to survey data released by the Energy Storage Association of India (IESA).
In the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) tender, two 250MW/500MWh battery storage systems are planned to be built on the same site and connected to India's interstate transmission system via a substation in Fatehgarh, Uttar Pradesh.
The bidding process lasted more than 10 hours, with major Indian energy developers such as ReNew Solar Power, NTPC Renewable Energy and Azure Power, and international players such as energy trading investor Hartree Partners Singapore bidding on the spot.
JSW Energy won the bid at Rs 1,083,500/MW.
After months of anticipation in the industry, Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) officially launched a pilot tender in April this year, aiming to serve as a model for other tenders.
The Indian government is expected to launch a tender for a total of 4GWh of independent deployment of energy storage pilot projects. This is in addition to state-level tendering activities.
Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) will also reserve some storage capacity for grid operators to experiment with battery storage for ancillary services such as frequency response. So far, India has not rolled out a broad ancillary services scheme, but it is understood that this is changing.
