Hoping to make India a supply base for our global energy storage needs: Julian Nebreda CEO of Fluence 

  MONEYCONTROL.COM BY SWETA GOSWAMI & RACHITA PRASAD

  FEBRUARY 24, 2023 

The joint venture (JV) between ReNew, one of India’s largest renewable energy companies, and Fluence Energy, a US-based energy storage and digital applications company, is going to scale up the manufacture of battery energy storage systems (BESS) in India, said Julian Nebreda, President and CEO, Fluence.

In an interaction with Moneycontrol, Nebreda and Jan Teichmann, Regional President, APAC, at Fluence, said the JV will focus on localising products related to BESS in India as well as in other countries.

Fluence is a global leader in energy storage and digital applications for renewables, and the JV with ReNew was firmed up last December.

Teichmann explained that Fluence would be responsible for the product and engineering knowhow in the JV, and ReNew will be responsible for the renewable energy projects for which the BESS will be built. “We are also hoping to make India a supply base for our global needs. So, India could export to Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) nations and potentially, Europe. We are already doing projects in India,” he said.

Teichmann also stated that going by the current pace of projects, it might take India 3-4 years to actually start adding 5 GWh of battery storage annually to meet its goal of 50 GWh of domestic capacity by 2030. India plans to generate 50 percent of its electricity from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030. Further, it aims to achieve net zero by 2070.

India’s battery storage schemes will boost EVs

Nebreda said the push for electric vehicles (EV) in India will automatically make the country an attractive manufacturing location for energy storage systems. “That's one element. The second element is that the Indian government’s energy storage programme was also driven by the EV push. This will catalyse the production of batteries in India. Since gas is expensive and renewable energy is intermittent, energy storage systems are the natural solution,” he added.

As part of India’s EV Vision 2030, the government has targeted 30 percent electric vehicle (EV) penetration by 2030.

On May 12, 2021, the union government approved a production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for the manufacture of advanced chemistry cell (ACC) battery storage. The total outlay of the scheme is Rs. 18,100 crore over a period of five years.

Also, in her budget speech on February 1, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that BESS projects will be offered viability gap funding (VGF) for a total capacity of 4,000 MWh.

First 150 MWh BESS of the JV to be ready by July-August

Teichmann informed that a 150 MWh BESS will be commissioned by July-August in Karnataka. “This will be the biggest at present. But bigger BESS’ from others are set to come up very soon. However, this is not our first project in India. Our first project was a 10 MWh system in Delhi in 2019.”

Next, he said, the company will set up a 50 MWh BESS by the end of this year. “But there will be more soon. We also have Fluence’s cloud-based asset performance management software, which we plan to apply on every system globally, including our projects in India,” he added.

Teichmann said the asset performance management software helps monitor the system up to the cell level of the batteries. “What is the temperature, what is the performance, what is the status of the system (in order to predict output)? It tells all that. It also predicts service needs in real time. It is a very detailed monitoring system, which helps improve system performance,” he explained.

He added that the company is also attracted to the commercial and industrial (C&I) market and is exploring corporate power purchase agreements (PPAs). “We are trying to figure out how big that market really is. It is an interesting segment,” Teichmann said.