Delhi-based think-tank Council for Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) has, in a recent report, analysed India’s battery energy storage system (BESS) and pumped storage hydro (PSH) needs, under high and moderate demand scenarios, if India sets up 500 GW and 600 GW of renewable energy by 2030. In the 500-GW moderate demand scenario, India will need 132 GWh of BESS and 100 GWh of PSH. However, in the 600-GW high demand scenario, the storage requirement will increase to 280 GWh of BESS and 100 GWh of PSH. This aligns with India’s energy storage obligation for 2030. As of January 2025, the operational BESS capacity stands at 360 MWh. “The gap between existing and required storage capacity indicates the urgent need to fast-track investments in energy storage,” says the CEEW report, titled ‘How can India meet its rising power demand’.
Cleaner, cheaper at 600 GW
The CEEW report also notes that setting up 600 GW of clean energy across more states could reduce generation costs by 6-18 paise per unit, eliminate the need for new coal plants, save ₹13,000-42,400 crore in power procurement costs, and create 53,000 to one lakh additional jobs — all while cutting carbon emissions by 9-16 per cent, compared with 2023-24.
Achieving 600-GW non-fossil fuel capacity would require significant investment in flexible resources such as battery storage (70 GW of four-hour battery energy storage systems), pumped storage hydro (13 GW), and retrofitting 140 GW of coal capacity to manage grid stability. The rapidly declining cost of battery storage favours a high RE pathway. For instance, in the last two years alone, tariffs for stand-alone battery storage have dropped by 65 per cent, without any subsidy support, the report says.
BHEL’s bid for floating solar
The public sector power equipment major BHEL is the sole bidder for building two floating solar plants on the Rengali reservoir in Odisha. The plants — 100 MW and 200 MW capacity, respectively — will be owned by a joint venture of the central public sector company NHPC and Green Energy Development Corporation of Odisha.
The project would have come up earlier, but Odisha’s electricity distribution company, GRIDCO, did not accept the bid tariff of ₹3.56 a kWhr. The tender was floated again in April 2023 and BHEL turned out to be the sole bidder. The bid is “under evaluation”.
