Indian power minister R.K. Singh has chaired a meeting with battery-based energy storage manufacturers calling on them to set up manufacturing units in India.

Dr Rahul Walawalkar is president and MD of Customized Energy Solutions and an executive director of the India Energy Storage Alliance. A proud evangelist for renewables and advanced energy storage technologies, Andy Colthorpe asked him about what 2017 meant for India’s storage industry and what’s getting him enthused – or apprehensive – about 2018.

The winner of India’s first major solar-plus-storage auction, which has subsequently been scrapped for retendering, has said that despite being an unfortunate development, the firm is still keen to work closely with government on this technology for which the economics are continuously and rapidly improving.

The start of construction on India’s largest energy storage project is not only of strategic importance to regulators, but could also drive another wave of utility-scale projects in India, the chief of the country’s storage Alliance has said.

Dr. Rahul Walawalkar of the Indian Energy Storage Alliance also predicts at least two lithium-ion cell manufacturing plants of 500MWh+ capacity to start construction in India this year.

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi has launched a new programme to electrify every willing household in the country by 31 December 2018, using solar, energy storage batteries and LED lighting.

India’s Central Electricity Authority (CEA) is debating how and whether to introduce a mandate for solar and wind projects above a certain size to be coupled with energy storage.

The secretary of India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) Anand Kumar has stressed the importance of energy storage to the overall renewables sector and invited industry to come and set up battery manufacturing in India.

India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has issued a new order seeking to improve the quality of components in the solar sector, including batteries to be used for stationary energy storage.

India’s largest utility NTPC has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for the setting up 50MW of solar power projects combined with battery energy storage near Port Blair in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.