State-owned engineering firm Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) has announced it has won its first commercial order for state-of-the-art battery energy storage systems from The Energy and Resource Institute (TERI).

“The company has signed a contract agreement with TERI for setting up of a cumulative 410 kWh battery energy storage systems (BESS) in the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi,” BHEL said in a press release.

“BHEL 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 were received from reputed companies such as Larsen & Toubro, Mahindra Susten, Hero Solar, Honeywell Automation, Amara Raja and Okaya Power,” TERI announced earlier.

TERI issued the tender on turnkey basis under UI-ASSIST (US-India Collaborative for Smart Distribution System with Storage) initiative with BSES Rajdhani Power Limited (BRPL).

The UI-ASSIST consortium is undertaking collaborative research on various smart grid technologies and energy storage for power distribution systems. The overall objective of this project is to evolve a future distribution grid that will allow the continuing increase of distributed energy resources penetration towards a carbon-free electricity system.

BHEL’s scope of work in the contract includes design, supply, testing, installation & commissioning along with a comprehensive five-year AMC of the systems at three different locations. BHEL’s Electronics Division, Bengaluru, will execute the project.

BHEL has already commissioned a 1 MWh BESS at its Corporate R&D Centre located in Hyderabad. The state-of-the-art system is commissioned with three different battery technologies, lithium-ion, advanced lead-carbon and flow batteries.

BHEL has embarked upon a transformation journey and is actively pursuing diversification of its portfolio in non-coal segments like energy storage and e-mobility. With its vast experience of more than five decades of indigenized manufacturing, it is geared to provide tailor-made solutions for battery energy storage systems to meet different kinds of customer requirements.