India's Premier and RCT Form Joint Venture to Build 12GWh Energy Storage Factory

en.Wedoany.com Reported - RCT India, a subsidiary of Germany's RCT Group, has formed a joint venture with Indian solar manufacturer Premier Energies to build a 12GWh battery energy storage system (BESS) manufacturing plant in Telangana, India. The project will be implemented by Premier Battery Technologies, a subsidiary of Premier Energies. The total 12GWh capacity will be built in phases, with Phase I planned at 6GWh; the initial 6GWh constitutes the first phase of the project.

The two companies said the proposed plant will address BESS demand from commercial and industrial applications and utility-scale applications in India and international markets. The joint venture also plans to establish an export-oriented manufacturing platform, with the two parties intending to supply BESS products from India to overseas markets.

India is accelerating the deployment of renewable energy and supporting energy storage capacity. Earlier this month, India's Central Electricity Authority (CEA) proposed that starting from July 2027, new ground-mounted solar and onshore wind projects must be equipped with energy storage and meet grid-forming inverter requirements; the draft stipulates that storage capacity must be no less than 10% of project capacity, and from July 2029, the storage duration will increase from two hours to four hours.

A recent report released by Wood Mackenzie points to a gap between India's growing battery storage demand and its limited domestic cell manufacturing capacity. At the time the report was published, India's 260GWh of battery storage demand in its 2026 project tender pipeline could be supplied by less than 1% of the country's 2GWh of operational cell capacity. According to ESN Premium's August 2026 report, China's current annual battery cell capacity is more than 1,000 times that of India. Wood Mackenzie believes that in the short term, downstream component manufacturing may become the industry's main priority, while scaled cell production still has a long way to go.

Supply chain challenges are not limited to stationary energy storage. In a guest blog published on Energy-Storage.news in May, analysts from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) noted that India's battery supply chain remains heavily dependent on imports, especially in upstream segments, with most battery cells imported from China. IEEFA believes that India is trying to reduce its dependence on imported oil and natural gas through transportation electrification and grid-scale battery storage, which in turn creates another form of dependence.

Chiranjeev Saluja, Managing Director of Premier Energies, said that energy storage is an urgent need for India's power system today; as India continues to expand its renewable energy generation capacity, energy storage will play a key role in building a reliable, resilient, and sustainable power ecosystem.

The proposed Telangana plant is expected to advance India's domestic BESS manufacturing capacity while also supporting Indian exports.