Wins in competitive solicitations for large-scale battery storage projects in India have been announced by KPI Green Energy Ltd and Power Grid Corporation of India (POWERGRID) in the past few days.
On Friday (3 January), KPI Green Energy disclosed to the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) that it had received a Letter of Intent (LOI) from Gujarat Urjas Vikas Nigam Ltd (GUVNL) for the development of battery energy storage system (BESS) projects.
Headquartered in Gujarat, KPI Green Energy, the solar and hybrid power generation arm of renewable energy developer KPI Group, was awarded the LOI from state-owned utility holding company GUVNL for projects with an aggregate capacity of 445MW/890MWh at multiple locations in the western state.
The projects had been chosen through a GUVNL solicitation conducted under a tariff-based competitive bidding (TBCB) process. It was part of the seventh phase of energy storage solicitations supported by the Indian Union Government’s Viability Gap Funding (VGF) scheme, administered by the national Power System Development Fund (PSDF).
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VGF is a support mechanism introduced in the 2023-2024 Union Budget, which provides up to 40% of project capital expenditure (Capex), aimed at promoting the uptake of energy storage resources across India to enable the growing adoption and integration of renewable energy.
For KPI Group, which has a renewable energy portfolio in India of around 6GW and a 10GW by 2030 target, these represent the developer and independent power producer’s (IPP’s) first utility-scale BESS projects. The company claimed in its NSE disclosure that it is significant that the LOI was “awarded by a major government body”.
POWERGRID among winners in 2GWh GUVNL tender
On 29 December, POWERGRID received a Letter of Award (LoA) for a 150MW/300MWh BESS project in Andhra Pradesh, the company said in a NSE submission dated 30 December.
Power Grid Corporation of India, which is a central public sector entity owned by India’s government Ministry of Power, was awarded the project at the 400/220kV Kalikiri substation in Andhra Pradesh’s Chittoor District by The Transmission Corporation of Andhra Pradesh (APTRANSCO).
Also held under nationally established TBCB guidelines and supported by the Power System Development Fund VGF subsidy scheme, the POWERGRID project, along with six other projects, will be delivered under a build-own-operate (BOO) model.
APTRANSCO will have the right to utilise the BESS resources ‘on-demand,’ totalling 1GW of output and 2GWh storage capacity, to help state distribution companies (Discoms) and state load dispatch centre (SLDC) management of the electricity network.
The electricity system operator’s tender was launched in August 2025, and its selections were announced in December, ahead of LoAs being sent.
Energy market consultancy Enerdata noted in a 2 December blog post on its website that the lowest bid received by APTRANSCO was for IR148k/month (US$1,654/month), citing reporting from news and market research firm Mercom.
Alongside POWERGRID, projects selected were from Ecoren Energy, which was awarded two projects totalling 500MW/1,000MWh, Bondada Engineering (225MW/450MWh), Bhagwati Group (75MW/150MWh), SVR Electro Projects (25MW/50MWh) and Legion Energy Products (25MW/50MWh).
Just a few days before the POWERGRID and KPI Green Energy disclosures, India’s Ministry of Power issued a directive that projects benefitting from Viability Gap Funding must include a minimum of 20% domestic content.
The scheme was expanded in June to support an additional 30GWh of projects, on top of the 4GWh initially announced in 2023 and the subsequent addition of 13.2GWh.
