Last fortnight, Solar EnergyCorporation of India (SECI), thegovernment-owned companytasked with development of the

solar energy sector in the country, issueda tender for 100 MW that the successfulbidders would set up in the solar park atKadapah, Andhra Pradesh.

The tender was unique, because forthe first time it brought in ‘storage’. Itsaid that the developer should put up, inaddition to the solar plant, a 2.5 MWhrcapacity storage unit for every 50 MW ofsolar. SECI will soon announce similartenders for 200 MW of solar forKarnataka. The company wouldtherefore cause 15 MWhr of energystorage set up in the country.

This is unprecedented. There was onecall for ‘expression of interest’ in March,for setting up a wind-solar hybrid plantwith 1 MWhr of storage, but that wasonly a EoI and for a smaller capacity. Theonly comparable storage capacity in thecountry is the 10 MWhr battery arraythat the American company, AES, issetting up in Haryana for itscollaborator, Panasonic.

Nothing newStoring electricity is nothing new, asanyone who recharges his phonebattery knows. People store electricity ininverters at homes and, in the recentyears, many telecom towers havediscarded their diesel back-up andinstalled battery packs instead.According to the Indian Energy StorageAlliance (IESA), in the last two years,Lithium-ion batteries worth about $500million have been bought for use in

Indian telecom towers. So what is newabout the SECI tenders and AES venture?In one word: size. The MW-scale storageunits indicate that India has stepped upinto a rarefied field of hoarding up largechunks of electricity.

The advent of large-scale energystorage has been on the cards for someyears now. In India, as anywhere in theworld, it is inevitable. You can’tengender a solar revolution withoutstorage — otherwise, you will still needgrid power after the sun sets. You cannothave distributed energy supply, such asmicro-grids, without storage. Energystorage is the heart of electric mobility.

Storage is fundamentalFurthermore, storage is fundamental tobalancing demand and supply in a largegrid. When you have large capacities ofwind and solar pumping fickleelectricity into the grid, ‘storage’ is a bigfriend, for you can store excess energy init and drain it when generation fromwind and solar dips. As such, ‘storage’has been the ‘next big thing’ in energyfor the last half-decade or so.

However, storing vast quantities ofenergy has been a challenge. Untilrecently, if you wanted a large back-upenergy source, you bought a Cumminsor a Powerica diesel generator — theenergy lay stored in the fuels. In very fewplaces in the country another trick wasemployed — they pumped water into ahigh tank when the demand for powerwas not much, and ran it down to turnthe turbines and produce electricitywhen the demand rose. But such‘pumped storage’ facilities can’t be put

up everywhere. Storing energyelectrochemically in compact batterypacks of sizes ranging from as small astelevision sets to as large as shippingcontainers has been the subject ofintense research globally in the last fewyears. The e�orts are coming to fruitionand ‘storage’ is the ‘in-thing’ globally. Bysymbolising the ‘arrival’ of big-ticketstorage in India, the SECI tender shines alight on the vast number of activities inthis area that are gathering momentumnow.

For instance, our government isworking towards bringing a NationalEnergy Storage Mission. On the anvil isthe setting up of an Energy StorageResearch Institute. The IESA is workingwith the US-headquartered certifyingand validating agency, UnderwritersLaboratories, to evolve standards forstorage systems. The Alliance is alsoworking towards setting up an ‘energystorage-focused incubator’. IIT Bombayis in the process of setting up a Centre ofExcellence for ElectrochemicalResearch—essentially for storage.

Keen on IndiaForeign storage companies are keen ontenting up in India. Last year, the US-based Imergy Power System, whichmakes ‘flow batteries’, said it wouldprovide battery back-up to SunEdison’ssolar-powered mini-grids. Another USflow battery company, Vionx Energywants an India presence. (Flow batteriesare large systems that work on theprinciple of movement of electronsbetween two sets of electrolytes; they arere-chargeable, last about 20 years andcan store enough energy for severalhours of discharge.) Panasonic has saidit wants to provide battery back-up,albeit of smaller size, to ATMs, so the

machines function even if there is apower outage. The Chinese company,BYD, is interested too. For companiessuch as these, the SECI tender is apositive signal.

India seems to be on the cusp of a‘storage revolution’. A recent study ofthe IESA estimated that Indian marketfor storage in 2015 was 4.4 GW, withhome inverters accounting for 60 percent of it. The study said that betweennow and 2022, India will set up 70GW/200 GWhr of storage. Batteries forreplacing diesel generator sets and formaintaining grid stability alone will bea 4-6 GW market, says Dr RahulWalawalkar, Executive Director, IESA,and President of CES India Pvt Ltd.

The anticipated rapid fall in costs willhelp, he says. Today, Li-ion batteries costaround $ 350 a kWhr, but experts (suchas those in General Motors) expect it todecline to $100 by 2022. Incidentally, theconventional lead-acid batteries alreadycost only that much, but they do not lastlong – about 1,000 cycles, comparedwith 3,000-5,000 cycles for Li-ion.

Another (simpler) way of looking atcosts is the levelised cost of energy thatis taken out of the batteries. Walawalkarsays that Li-ion batteries give out kWhrat an average cost of ₹10-12 over theirlives; this, he says, will decline to ₹5 inthree years. Few can miss the parallelbetween ‘storage now’ and ‘solar fiveyears back’. Solar power cost ₹17-18 akWhr in 2010, it is less than ₹5 today,and is expected to go down further.

Against the backdrop of suchdevelopments, the AES system of 10MWhr and SECI’s 15 MWhr mark amilestone. The year 2016 will go down inthe energy history of India as the timewhen large-scale storage systems beganto be deployed, which is truly epochal.

With the increased focus on renewable energy, storageis coming of age, writes M Ramesh

The ‘next big thing’ in energy

Big save The advent of large-scale energy storage has been on the cards for some yearsnow. In India, as anywhere in the world, it is inevitable

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6 BusinessLine WEDNESDAY • JULY 17 • 2016CLEANTECHCLEANTECH

PREETI MEHRA

Next time you guzzle a beverage, youcould also have the pleasure of recyc-ling the pet bottle yourself.

You would just have to put it into theBiocrux plastic bottle crushing andflaking machine lying in the cornerand be assured that the recycled flakeswill find their way as an additive to al-kyd, enamel or lacquer paint or asresin.

Pitched as the 360 degree solutionfor plastic waste, the recycling con-traption has been developed byBiocrux India. It has been locally de-signed, fabricated and assembled to be

used at the point of consumption.“That is the USP of the Biocrux ma-

chine. It is meant for consumers to per-sonally recycle the pet bottle once theyhave polished o� its contents. It isideal for public places, tourist spots,malls, fairs – wherever consumption ishappening. We have installed it at theElephanta caves in Mumbai where it isserving the public well,” says AjayMishra, the Founder Director & CEO.

A chartered accountant who hasworked in companies like Lakme Lever,L’Oreal India and Reliance Industries,Mishra decided to go it alone afterwhat he witnessed in Mumbai during

the devastating July 2005 floods whereplastic bottles were overflowing andchoking all the sewage channels. Liv-ing out his passion he began to spendweekends creating a machine thatwould turn the bottles into a usefulsubstance.

He was soon joined by Asesh Sarkar,a polymer engineer who had rich expe-rience in paints company Akzonobelfor over 7 years. Now Managing Dir-ector of Biocrux, he believes in the vir-tue of frugality and the vision of openinnovation.

The first Biocrux machine was in-stalled in 2012 in Mumbai's InorbitMall. Today the contraptions arepresent in Pune and Bangalore as welland hope to reach another four to fivecities before the financial year is over.

able disposal. “Two-third of India’s PETbottles are not getting recycled, theseare either thrown or sometimes re-filled with water for drinking andreselling.

The company, apart from providingthe BIocrux machines, is now embark-ing on the second phase of the recyc-ling by finding di�erent uses for theflakes that are produced. It has alreadysucceeded in using it as a paint addict-ive. “We are also looking at the possib-ility of turning the flakes intopolyester yarn, or creating dust binswith it or using them to build tem-porary shelters. “The 360 degree cyclemust be completed. The aim is thatthere is no reuse, no misuse of PETbottles and they do not land up in thelandfills”.

“Bisleri was the first company thatliked the product and came forward tosponsor the machines. Now others

have also shown interest and installedthem, starting a “PET neutral” driveamong the employees. Biocrux Indiaensures that flakes from these are go-ing to the right channel for recyclingin the most sustainable way. Our ap-proach saves a lot of CO2 emission inrecycling, reduces transportation cost,fuel by 9-10 times on handling thesewastes, saves two-thirds water com-pared to existing recycling process,”says Mishra.

He laments the state of waste man-agement today and points out thattwo-thirds of the country's wastes aregoing to dump yards. He has foundthat municipalities exhaust 70 to 90per cent of their budget on the logist-ics of waste clearance with almost nofunds, time or energy spent on sustain-

From pet to paint: personal recycling is now making its mark A recycling machine developed by Biocrux India — andmade locally — targets the end-consumer

A Biocrux machine

A Biocrux machine

GREENVIEW BY DIPANKAR

THEY SAID IT

Once the renewable infrastructureis built, the fuel is free forever.

AL GOREAMERICAN POLITICIAN AND ENVIRONMENTALIST

CLEANTECH CLASSROOM CLEAN FUNThe inverted beauty