Energy Storage

Though electric vehicles are up to 67% less emissions intensive than gasoline cars, their competitiveness depends on many factors like the source of electricity used for vehicle and battery manufacturing and charging. Given that India still has a high share of coal or other fossil fuels in its power mix, electrifying the current car taxi fleet would help it cut emissions faster than incentivising the use of privately owned EVs because of the taxis’ greater utilisation in terms of miles travelled.

Mining company Neometals and Manikaran Power have started a jointly funded study into the feasibility of establishing India’s first lithium refinery, which would process ore from the Mount Marion mine in Western Australia.

The NITI Aayog has suggested banning sales of non-electric two and three wheelers in 2025 and cars, trucks and buses five years later as well as forcing public fleets and the cars used by ride hailing apps to be electric.

Bidders can now lodge their interest until July 1 and are required to submit any amendments, signed and stamped, along with the bid.

The global energy storage market is poised to grow rapidly in the coming years, with Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) predicting $620 billion in investment over the next two decades will push cumulative global installations to 942 GW/2,857 GWh by 2040. Declining lithium-ion battery costs are driving much of this growth, with BNEF expecting the cost of utility-scale storage systems to fall roughly 52% through 2030, following an approximate 80% slide in the average price of lithium-ion battery packs in the first seven years of the current decade.

In news that will add urgency to Indian government efforts to establish a domestic storage industry, funding has apparently been secured for 16 GWh-plus production lines in Sweden and Germany. Is India at risk of being left in the starting blocks?

A report on the prospects for a mooted $2.6tn electric vehicle market over the next decade says PHEVs – part electric, part gas-guzzling – are already losing market share rapidly to pure electric rivals, and will be extinct by 2030.

State-owned Madhya Pradesh Power Management Company Limited (MPPMCL) has invited domestic and global players for providing grid-scale energy storage services of up to 500 MW with 8 hours of daily discharge and setting up a storage manufacturing facility in the state. The deadline for proposal submission is August 2.

The government is considering financial incentives such as import and export duty waivers to woo battery manufacturers to set up a globally competitive manufacturing base in India.

Following the Indian government’s 40 GW plan for the states, Telangana has pitched for setting up a 5 GW lithium ion plant by announcing the ready availability of 200 acres of land and power and water for the fab at a concessional rate.