India's MSEDCL Announces Results of 2GW/4GWh Standalone Energy Storage Tender

en.Wedoany.com Reported - On September 22, India's Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (MSEDCL) completed the award of a 2,000MW/4,000MWh standalone battery energy storage system (BESS) tender. The project is divided into Part A and Part B, with Part A having a scale of 1,500MW/3,000MWh at a uniform awarded capacity price of 238,000 rupees/MW·month, and Part B having a scale of 500MW/1,000MWh at an awarded capacity price of 240,000 rupees/MW·month. The project adopted competitive bidding on tariffs and received support from the Ministry of Power's Viability Gap Funding (VGF) for energy storage.

In Part A, Oriana Power won 500MW, BSL Engineering Service won 300MW, ArMee Infotech won 250MW, Stockwell Solar Services and GK Energy each won 150MW, Claro Energy won 100MW, and Jailaxmi Sugar Products (Nitali) won 50MW. In Part B, Oriana Power won an additional 400MW, Aditya Green Energy won 40MW, and Kotecha Sales, Rudraksha Power, and Gurutura Green Energy each won 20MW. Oriana Power secured a total of 900MW/1,800MWh across both parts, becoming the developer with the largest awarded capacity in this tender round.

According to the tender documents previously issued by MSEDCL, the project adopts a build-own-operate (BOO) model, and the winning developers will sign a 15-year Battery Energy Storage Purchase Agreement (BESPA) with MSEDCL. The energy storage facilities will be deployed at substations associated with MSEDCL, the Maharashtra State Electricity Transmission Company Limited (MSETCL), and the central transmission system. MSEDCL is responsible for providing charging energy and dispatching storage capacity in accordance with dispatch instructions. During the contract period, MSEDCL has the right to dispatch at least 6,300 cycles without additional payment for those cycles.

The tender also set clear operational and localization requirements. Winning projects must maintain an annual system availability of no less than 95% and a monthly round-trip efficiency of no less than 85%; the minimum localization ratio is 20%, of which the energy management system application software must adopt a domestically developed Indian solution. The VGF support cap is 1.8 million rupees per MW. Winning developers are also required to submit a performance bank guarantee of 1.4 million rupees per MW before signing the BESPA.

This 2GW/4GWh project round is MSEDCL's reorganized energy storage procurement in 2026. A previous tender of the same scale had produced a lowest capacity price of 165,998 rupees/MW·month, but the Appellate Tribunal for Electricity subsequently revoked the related approval, with the core dispute involving the increase in the minimum utilization cycles from 5,475 to 6,300. MSEDCL then relaunched the tender and retained the 6,300-cycle requirement in the new procurement documents.

Based on the results of this round, the 2,000MW project corresponds to 4,000MWh of energy storage capacity, with an overall configuration duration of 2 hours. GK Energy has disclosed that its 150MW/300MWh project is expected to be commissioned within 18 months after the agreement is signed and is expected to generate continuous capacity service revenue over the 15-year contract period.