BHEL Bags TERI’s Battery Energy Storage Tender for Rs 2.51 Crore

BHEL has emerged as the best supplier in a tender recently floated by TERI for the installation and maintenance of battery energy storage systems (BESS).

Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) has emerged as the best supplier of battery and associated equipment in a tender recently floated by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) for installation and maintenance of battery energy storage systems (BESS).

BHEL has offered 410 kWh of cumulative battery capacity for a total cost of Rs. 2.51 crore, including six years of comprehensive warranty and maintenance. There are very limited tenders of BESS in India so far and the responses to this tender have also been received from Larsen & Toubro, Mahindra Susten, Hero Solar, Honeywell Automation, Amara Raja, Okaya Power, etc.

“This level of interest from prestigious organisations in the tender signifies the transition of the electricity distribution grid with increasing penetration of distributed energy resources supported by stationary battery energy storage technologies,” TERI issued in a statement.

TERI – under the licensee area of BSES Rajdhani Power Limited (BRPL) – is implementing a pilot project to integrate Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) at the distribution level. This is being implemented under an initiative of US-India collaborative for smart distribution system with storage (UI-ASSIST), a bi-lateral consortium of 30 collaborating entities, led in India by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur and by Washington State University (WSU) in the USA.

“These tender results are game-changing – they show that it is cost-effective for BRPL to add batteries instead of adding transformer capacity in many instances, and for housing societies to use solar-cum-battery systems for electricity supply instead of DG sets. It also shows that if time-of-day tariffs are applicable on a year-on-year basis then batteries, along with solar rooftop, are a cost-effective way of minimising electricity cost,” said Dr. Ajay Mathur, Director General, TERI.

The tender, open for both Lithium-ion and Advanced Lead Acid companies, aimed at Design, Supply, Testing, Installation & Commissioning, along with Comprehensive Annual Maintenance Contract (CAMC) for five years of BESS on Turnkey Basis in NCT of Delhi was issued in December 2019. According to TERI, an important objective of this project is to bridge the gap between smart grid, storage, and renewable energy research and facilitate its subsequent adoption by distribution utilities in their systems through pilots with the joint efforts of the Indo-US consortium.

“This tender holds special importance as it identifies appropriate technologies as per techno-economic evaluation and validates their technical characteristics under Indian environmental conditions. Further, it gathers data to explore more opportunities for BESS in managing the variability of demand and supply at the electricity distribution level. It also states a suitable step-by-step process to evaluate technology as nascent as battery energy storage,” said Alekhya Datta, Fellow and Area Convenor, Electricity and Fuels Division, TERI.