Torrent Power has contracted Larsen & Toubro to construct a 3GW pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) plant in Maharashtra, India.
Mumbai-headquartered conglomerate Larsen & Toubro (L&T) announced yesterday (14 January) that its heavy civil infrastructure arm will deliver the Saidongar-1 Pumped Storage Project’s 10 reversible pump turbines, each of 300MW.
L&T did not disclose the financial terms of the contract but noted that Saidongar-1 will be India’s largest pumped hydro energy storage facility to date. That said, with India targeting a massive increase in PHES (referred to as pumped storage projects, or PSPs, in Indian industry terminology) capacity, many other projects are in development across the country.
L&T, which is active in delivering services to a multitude of industry sectors, including energy project engineering, procurement and construction (EPC), said the order had been booked from Torrent Power’s subsidiary, Torrent Energy Storage Solutions.
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Torrent Energy Solutions was originally established under the name Torrent PSH 3, and Saidongar-1 PSP will be its parent company’s first pumped storage project. The asset will be built in the Maharashtra district of Raigad and support grid reliability and energy security.
According to documents seen by Energy-Storage.news, the project will require the construction of new upper and lower reservoirs and will be capable of delivering 6-hour discharge daily, implying an energy storage capacity of 18GWh.
In developer, power producer and electricity distributor Torrent Power’s financial results release for the second quarter of its financial year 2026, ending 30 September 2025, the company had an aggregate generation capacity of 4,961MWp comprising 2.7GW of gas, 1.9GW of renewable energy and 362MW of coal.
Meanwhile, its development pipeline across India included ~3.6GWp of renewables, 1.6GW of coal capacity and the 3GW pumped hydro plant.
Torrent Power signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the government of Maharashtra’s Department of Water Resources to establish the project in September 2024.
According to a draft Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Environmental Management Plan (EMP) produced by M/s. Aarvee Engineering Consultants for Torrent Power, the project obtained updated Terms of Reference (ToR) for its mandatory impact assessments in January 2025 from the Indian government’s Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC), following a change in planning, from a closed-loop PHES plant to an open-loop design.
An English language version of the draft EIA & EMP can be seen here, featuring more details.
As India pursues its goals of deploying 500GW of non-fossil fuel energy by 2030, including a majority share of solar PV and wind, while enhancing energy security and broadening grid access to rural populations, the country is deploying both battery energy storage system (BESS) and pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) technologies to provide the necessary balance of short-, medium- and long-duration energy storage (LDES).
The Central Electricity Authority (CEA) has estimated that 411.4GWh of energy storage will be required by 2031-2032, comprising around 236.2GWh from battery storage and 175.2GWh from PHES plants.
