10:30AM - 10:50AM
KEYNOTE Ministerial Address – India’s road from energy storage tendering through to delivery
Type:
Keynote Address
- With 254 GW of renewable energy capacity already installed, taking India past 50% non-fossil capacity in its overall power mix, the country will need nearly 230 GWh of energy storage by 2030 to ensure grid stability. We hear the views from a leading Ministerial figure of where India's storage market is heading and what policy commitments underpin it.
- India’s battery energy storage system (BESS) market is moving from aggressive tendering toward large-scale project execution, with increasing prioritisation towards grid integration, transmission readiness and long-term supply resilience.
- So how have policy support centred by the Viability Gap Funding, Firm and Dispatchable Renewable Energy (FDRE) and state-level mandates helped establish storage as an accepted asset class?
11:05AM - 11:35AM
Presentation: India BESS State of the Market
Type:
Presentation
- India’s clean energy transition is increasingly becoming dependent on large-scale storage deployment, with procurement shifting toward standalone energy storage system tenders that contract storage capacity without being tied to a specific renewable generation asset. These standalone tenders made up more than 71% of the total capacity tendered in India in 2025, according to the IEEFA, with standalone BESS projects accounting for 60% of this capacity. So, how will the dial move from tendering through to on-ground deployment?
- India has moved from near-zero BESS deployment to over 92GWh tendered in under three years — but the gap between tendering and commissioning is now the defining challenge for the market. We hear where the Indian BESS market actually stands.
- The vast majority of tendered capacity sits in the 2–4 hour range, but India's grid balancing requirements will demand 6–8 hour and longer storage well before 2030. So just how will the longer duration technologies gain market maturity?
11:35AM - 12:20PM
Panel: From Award to Grid: Making India’s Storage Pipeline Deliver
Type:
Panel
- India’s energy storage deployment ambitions are well intentioned. However, an end-to-end value chain that can translate all of that into commissioned megawatt-hours at the pace the grid requires still seems relatively undeveloped.
- So what does a successfully synchronised project look like? Which projects in the current pipeline have managed to coordinate land, equipment, finance, grid connection and offtake simultaneously? And what did they do differently from the majority that are stalled?
- India’s policy initiatives have helped shape how energy storage is procured financed, and delivered across the country. How have these policies – from Viability Gap Funding through to Firm and Dispatchable Renewable Energy (FDRE) contracting, Energy Storage Obligation, amongst others – harmonised how energy is produced and then transacted right across the country?
1:50PM - 2:35PM
Panel: What It Actually Takes to Commission a Battery Project in India Today
Type:
Panel
- Commissioning projects can introduce an array of challenges including land acquisition disputes, Central Transmission Utility (CTU) connectivity queues and load dispatch approvals adding months to timelines that were never modelled at bid stage. So are there any best contingency measures project developers can take after winning a tender before these circumstances arise?
- Commissioned BESS projects have indicated a discrepancy in projected vs actual financial returns. These are caused by various factors such as degradation assumptions in bid models. So how are conversations with lenders nurtured yet create buy-in, and what does it mean for every other project currently seeking financing?
- A generation of aggressively bid projects were structured on equipment costs, grid connection timelines and DISCOM payment reliability that no longer reflect market reality. At what point does an awarded project become unbuildable as structured, and who absorbs that cost?
2:35PM - 3:20PM
Panel: Propelling Clean Energy Investment in India
Type:
Panel
- India’s bilateral relationships in clean energy have become more increasingly prominent, but the flow of US capital into Indian storage specifically remains well below its potential. This is partly due to unfamiliarity with Indian project structures and perceived regulatory risk. What do US investors need to see, in terms of project structure, regulatory clarity and return profile, to allocate capital to Indian storage at scale?
- Rajasthan and Gujarat are India's two largest renewable energy states and are actively seeking international investment partnerships. What are the investment pipelines available in other parts of the country and the practical steps required to access that capital through state-level partnerships?
10:00AM - 10:45AM
Day 2 Keynote Panel: What It Takes to Get a Battery Project Funded in India Right Now
Type:
Keynote Panel
- The project finance landscape for BESS in India has evolved significantly in the last 18 months. But the gap between the number of projects seeking debt and the number that meet lender standards remains large. So, what does a genuinely bankable Indian BESS project currently look like?
- Tariffs have been bid to historic lows, battery costs have spiked, and degradation assumptions aren’t meeting the results seen in actuality, and lenders are being asked to take a long-term view on assets whose performance in Indian conditions has limited data behind it. So what does a project actually need to demonstrate before capital will commit, and how many of the projects currently sitting in India’s awarded pipeline can genuinely meet that standard today?
- Warranty enforceability from overseas manufacturers, battery safety standards and long-term performance risk have moved from engineering concerns to bankability requirements. Are Indian projects currently meeting those thresholds? And if not, what is the fastest path to closing the gap?
11:00AM - 11:45AM
Panel: Debt, Equity, Blended Finance: Matching the Right Capital to the Right Project
Type:
Panel
- India’s BESS pipeline contains at least four fundamentally different project types — FDRE, standalone BESS on capacity charge, merchant, and distributed — each with a different risk profile, revenue certainty and counterparty structure. What does the right capital structure actually look like for each project class?
- Project debt from commercial banks works well for projects with long-term offtake agreements and creditworthy counterparties. However, this breaks down quickly for merchant projects, distributed assets and anything where the revenue stream has meaningful uncertainty. Where does commercial debt stop being the right tool, and what replaces it?
- Innovative finance instruments — including financing solutions offered by Development Financial Institutions filling the void that Viability Gap Funding development projects aren’t able to for utility-scale projects — are designed precisely for the gap between what commercial lenders will finance and what the market needs built, and which many Indian developers have never accessed. So, what does the process actually look like, how long does it take, and what does a project need to demonstrate to qualify?
- Infrastructure equity platforms are showing interest in India’s storage market. What would need to happen, in terms of project design, contract structure or revenue certainty, to bring that capital into the market at scale?
11:45AM - 12:15PM
Case Study Spotlight — Revenue Stacking and Ancillary Services in Mature Markets: What India Can Learn
Type:
Case Study
- International markets like Australia and the UK demonstrated how battery storage can deliver ancillary services at scale, creating an entirely new revenue stream that restructured the economics of grid-scale storage. In doing so it has created an entirely new revenue stream that restructured the economics of grid-scale storage. Delegates will understand key examples as to the specific market design features that unlocked the revenue stack and be equipped to advocate for analogous reforms in India's regulatory framework.
- How long does India have before its own ancillary services market matures to the point where early-mover advantage disappears? And are developers positioning their assets accordingly?
12:15PM - 1:00PM
Panel: Charging and Discharging: The Emerging Revenue Landscape for Battery Storage in India
Type:
Panel
- Energy arbitrage on India’s power exchanges is generating real revenue for early BESS operators, but the margins are thin, and the gap between what assets theoretically earn and what they actually earn in practice is wider than most bid models acknowledged. So what is a battery project genuinely worth in the Indian market today, and is that enough to service the debt that financed it?
- India’s ancillary services market remains relatively underdeveloped. The fast frequency response products that transformed the economics of storage in Australia and the UK are simply not available to Indian operators yet. So, when does that change, who is driving it, and what should developers be doing now to position their assets for those revenue streams when they arrive?
- How Deviation Settlement Mechanism (DSM) tightening has created a direct financial incentive for storage adoption by significantly increasing the penalties for schedule deviation. How are developers optimising dispatch strategies around DSM thresholds.
- DISCOMs are no longer passive offtakers sitting at the end of the payment chain. Several are now actively buying cheap power during the middle of the day, storing it, and dispatching it during the evening peak, running what are effectively merchant battery strategies. What does that mean for developers who assumed DISCOMs would be simple long-term counterparties, and does it create a competitive dynamic that nobody modelled at bid stage?
- The projects being financed today need a revenue stack that works in the present. How do you build a business case for a battery project in India relevant to current revenue reality, and what is the minimum revenue certainty a lender needs to see before they commit?
2:20PM - 3:05PM
Panel: Building a Battery Supply Chain for India: What’s Available, What’s Viable and What Comes Next?
Type:
Panel
- With such large dependency in sourcing battery cells from China, lndia’s push towards building a domestic manufacturing industry for battery cells is a long road ahead as it looks to meet storage procurement targets. On what timeline can India realistically reduce that dependency to manageable levels, and what assumptions should developers and lenders be making in their models right now?
- Battery cell prices experienced a 35–45% increase in less than seven months, making projects bid on falling-cost assumptions financially marginal or unviable. This session assesses how to build procurement and hedging strategies that protect project economics against further volatility.
- The Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme has sought to incentivise deployment for advanced chemistry cell batteries. However, uptake is running behind schedule and several anchor applicants have not progressed as planned. Which PLI investments are real and on what timeline will Indian cells be available at volume? And what should project teams be planning for in the meantime?
- There are signs of Chinese OEMs building manufacturing facilities: a development that could materially change the supply chain profile for lenders and developers if it proceeds. If Chinese manufacturer investments in India are credible, what would the timeline and scale look like, and how lenders are thinking about the bankability of domestically assembled versus imported cells?
3:05PM - 3:25PM
Fireside chat: Standards, Safety and Scale: Preparing India’s BESS Market for the Next Phase
Type:
Fireside Chat
- India’s lack of serious BESS incidents reflects early-stage deployment rather than an inherently safe operating environment. Commissioned capacity is set to accelerate sharply over the coming in the short to medium term. What safety frameworks need to be in place before scale arrives? And who is responsible for driving that agenda?
- Lenders and insurers are increasingly requiring Battery Management System (BMS) specification, thermal management design and operational procedures as explicit conditions before issuing commitment letters. How is the investment community’s growing focus on safety changing conversations at financial close, and are developers building to those requirements from the outset or retrofitting them at greater cost?
- Meeting international fire safety standards with India’s own BIS certification requirements remains in development. What does a genuinely compliant Indian BESS project look like, and where do the gaps between international lender requirements and domestic standards currently sit?
4:15PM - 5:00PM
Fireside chat: New Demand, New Requirements: How India’s Changing Load Profile is Reshaping Storage
Type:
Fireside Chat
- AI data centres, industrial decarbonisation and rapid residential growth are creating load profiles that India’s grid was never designed to serve. Is the storage pipeline being built today sized and configured for the demand India will have within the five-year deployment roadmap?
- Hyperscalers with renewable energy commitments need clean power around the clock but cannot tolerate the outages and frequency events that characterise high-renewable-penetration states. Behind-the-meter storage paired with renewables is becoming a procurement requirement. Is the Indian market producing the 8-12 hour duration assets that data centre operators actually need?
- States are increasingly writing firm, round-the-clock power delivery into procurement specifications as industrial and commercial load grows. Are developers committing to obligations their assets can reliably meet, or is a gap opening up between what contracts promise and what projects deliver?
10:15AM - 11:00AM
Panel: Behind the Meter: The C&I and Residential Storage Opportunity India Can Capture
Type:
Panel
- Maharashtra’s net-billing mandate has driven residential solar plus storage from near-zero to over 50,000 homes in two years. The grid stability benefits are measurable, the consumer economics work, and the installation pipeline is accelerating. Which states replicate this next — and what is the minimum policy trigger needed to get there?
- The same peak tariff pressure and grid unreliability driving residential adoption applies equally to C&I consumers — often with stronger economics given higher consumption volumes and greater sensitivity to outages. Why is C&I storage adoption still lagging behind the opportunity, and what combination of financing, product and regulatory clarity unlocks it?
- Behind-the-meter storage at both residential and C&I scale is already reducing peak demand and cutting grid stress in states where it is concentrated. Yet no remuneration mechanism exists for those system benefits. What regulatory change would most immediately allow distributed assets to be rewarded for the value they are already delivering?
11:15AM - 12:00PM
Panel: Plugging the Gap: Storage as India’s Fastest Transmission Fix
Type:
Panel
- India curtailed 300 GWh of renewable energy in Q1 2026 from transmission constraints alone, according to a report from Ember Energy. Around 3 to 4 GW of two-hour storage at existing pooling stations could have absorbed most of it. 236 GW of plug-and-play BESS headroom already exists at major pooling stations. So, what regulatory and commercial changes unlock it?
- India has met only 80% of its annual transmission buildout targets over the past five years. 20 GW of renewable capacity now faces connectivity delays of more than four months this financial year. What does the commercial model look like for a developer prepared to move first?
- Generation-led transmission planning created the mismatch India is now managing. Co-optimised planning — where generation and transmission are developed together — is the structural fix. Which institutions need to change their behaviour to make that happen, and who can drive it?
12:00PM - 12:45PM
Panel: Building the Storage Mix to Meet India’s Long-Term Deployment Pathway
Type:
Panel
- Battery storage remains significantly more expensive per unit than solar alone — largely because components are imported and India has no domestic lithium supply. Pumped hydro and thermal storage are already demonstrating materially lower cost points in operational projects. So what would it take for pumped hydro and thermal storage to be treated as genuinely bankable, procurable alternatives — and what is currently standing in the way?
- India has 6.2 GW of operational pumped hydro, 8.5 GW under construction and 64 GW under investigation. Coal mine areas — naturally hilly terrain with existing water sources — represent an entirely untapped pumped storage opportunity. What would it take to move pumped hydro in coal mines from pilot to pipeline?
- Thermal storage delivers long-duration output without dependence on imported critical minerals and can be manufactured domestically. What would it take for thermal storage to be treated as a credible, procurable alternative within India’s storage policy framework? And who needs to champion it?
- India’s 2030 storage targets were designed around batteries and pumped hydro. Mechanical, thermal and chemical storage are not factored into government planning numbers. Should India’s targets be reframed around duration and application rather than technology, and who has the authority to make that change?
- Batteries, pumped hydro and thermal storage each have distinct strengths across response speed, duration and cost. What does an optimally balanced Indian storage mix look like by 2030, and are the procurement frameworks in place to build it?
12:45PM - 1:05PM
Fireside chat: From First Life to Next Life: Building India’s Battery Recycling Industry
Type:
Fireside Chat
- India’s first wave of utility-scale BESS projects reaches end of life in the early 2030s. The recycling infrastructure to handle that material doesn’t yet exist at meaningful scale. Who is building it, and is it moving fast enough?
- Recovered lithium, cobalt and nickel from end-of-life cells are raw materials that could reduce India’s dependence on imported critical minerals: the same dependency making battery storage expensive today. At what point does recycling become a commercial opportunity rather than a cost of disposal?
- Second life deployment repurposes degraded batteries into lower-demand applications, extending asset value and deferring recycling cost. It creates a cheaper storage category for uses where high performance isn’t required. What does a viable second life market look like in India, and what needs to exist for it to develop?
