Energy Storage

Consultancy Bridge to India has looked into its crystal ball to predict India will add 10 GW of solar capacity this year and the same next year before deployment slows to 7 GW per year in 2022 and 2023, dogged by hurdles such as an inexplicable ongoing demand for new coal-fired power plants.

By engineering the structure of a hard carbon electrode, scientists at the CIC energIGUNE research center have created an ‘ultrafast battery’ which has been shown to combine the energy density of a lithium device with the fast discharge times normally associated with supercapacitors.

Having bagged 2.250 MW capacity in January, the Gujarat-based power generator has won four more solar projects—900 KW for JPB Fibers, 675 KW for N.J. Textile Industries, 135 KW for N.J. Texturisers and 950 KW for Sailaxmi Tex—aggregating to a capacity of 2.66 MW.

Having bagged orders for 470 chargers in pilot stage itself, Bengaluru based electric scooter startup FAE Bikes plans to aggressively expand its IOT enabled EV charging network. The chargers—costing just Rs 10,000—can be set up anywhere including small shops and homes with standard power supply.

While lithium batteries have taken center stage for energy storage, vanadium redox flow batteries could gain considerable traction in 2020. In previous years, vanadium battery installations around the world have done little more than provide proof of concept and a test bed for manufacturers, argues David Gillam from Mastermines. He looks at what may have changed since then and why a surge in batteries utilizing vanadium may be closer than many believe, with China taking the lead.

The winning startups will receive lab-to-market incubation support at the Clean Energy International Incubation Centre (CEIIC), which has been set up by the not-for-profit platform Social Alpha with support from Government of India and Tata Trusts in Delhi.

WoodMac analysts say the amount of new battery manufacturing capacity added in the nation this year could fall by as much as 10% because of the outbreak. With Tesla’s Shanghai gigafactory affected by the extended new-year-holiday shutdown, the analyst warned of potential supply shortages for Australia and the U.S. and U.K.

Panellists including a government representative and a member of the chief policy thinktank used by Narendra Modi agreed coal will continue as the staple source of Indian power into the mid century and technology should be employed to ‘clean’ it.

With electric vehicles making up only 3% of the global car market last year, analyst WoodMac says battery packs need to be cheaper and lighter and range anxiety must be addressed to change the habits of drivers.

China, Hong Kong and Vietnam are the top three nations exporting batteries to India. Chinese imports were worth $773 million in the last fiscal year with Hong Kong shipping $267 million worth and Vietnam $114 million, according to the Ministry of Commerce.