What is Chhattisgarh's policy and procurement programme for battery storage?

Chhattisgarh is a power-surplus, coal-heavy state, which makes its recent move into batteries interesting. There is no headline Chhattisgarh battery subsidy to apply for. What there is instead is procurement — and one tender in particular that is structured differently from almost every other state storage programme in India. This is the Chhattisgarh companion to our India BESS policy overview.

The flagship: CSPDCL’s distributed 760 MWh tender

In September 2025, CSPDCL — Chhattisgarh State Power Distribution Company Limited, the state DISCOM (distribution company) — issued a Request for Selection for 380 MW / 760 MWh of standalone battery storage under tariff-based competitive bidding, on a build-own-operate (BOO) model.

The unusual part is where the batteries go. Rather than one large site, the capacity is spread across 36 substations in 11 districts — Raipur, Baloda Bazar, Bilaspur, Raigarh, Janjgir-Champa, Durg, Bemetara, Balod, Mahasamund, Surajpur and Rajnandgaon — grouped into six packages. Two substations in Surajpur and two in Raipur take 30 MWh each; the remaining 32 take 20 MWh each.

Other terms from the tender:

• Each system is specified for two full charge–discharge cycles a day — an aggressive duty cycle that points at both a morning and an evening peak.
• Projects must be commissioned within 18 months of the effective BESPA (battery energy storage purchase agreement) date.
• The BESPA runs 12 years.
• Tender fee ₹29,500, earnest money deposit ₹2.2 lakh/MW, and a performance bank guarantee of ₹11 lakh/MW from selected bidders.
• Bids were due 30 September 2025, with techno-commercial bids opened on 1 October.

The second track: NVVN’s 500 MWh at Durg

Running alongside it is a very different animal. In December 2025, NVVN (NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam), NTPC’s power-trading arm, floated a tender for 125 MW / 500 MWh of STU-connected standalone storage — all of it at a single location, the 220 kV Khedamara substation in Durg.

This one is a four-hour system on a BOO model, and it carries real central money: viability gap funding of ₹18 lakh per MWh, adding up to about ₹90 crore across the project. The performance obligations are specific — a minimum monthly round-trip efficiency of 85%, at least one full cycle per day totalling 420 cycles a year, and dispatchable capacity held above 70% across the 16-year contract period. Bids closed on 30 December 2025.

Why the distributed design matters

Most state storage tenders buy a few big blocks connected at the transmission level. CSPDCL is buying many small ones connected at the distribution level, and that is a deliberate choice about what problem is being solved.

A battery at a distribution substation does things a distant transmission-connected plant cannot: it shaves the local evening peak, holds up voltage at the tail end of long rural feeders, and can defer an expensive transformer or line upgrade. The two-cycles-a-day specification reinforces this reading — the asset is expected to work hard on local load, not to sit waiting for a single evening discharge.

For suppliers, the practical consequence is that a 20 MWh block is not a bespoke engineering project. It is a handful of standardised units — a 20 MWh block is four 5 MWh containerised units — deployed as a repeatable peak-shaving building block across dozens of sites. The economics of that repeatability are the whole point of a six-package structure.

The regulatory and generation side

On the generation side, the state also hosts firmed renewable capacity. In September 2025 the CERC (Central Electricity Regulatory Commission) approved a tariff of ₹4.01/kWh for a SECI project pairing 100 MW of solar with a 40 MW/120 MWh battery at Rajnandgaon — reported as marginally above the PPA ceiling price to reflect verified additional costs. That is a useful reference point for what firmed solar costs in this part of India, and the structure is the standard solar-plus-storage configuration.

The state regulator, the Chhattisgarh State Electricity Regulatory Commission (CSERC), is the body that must ultimately approve discovered storage prices and their pass-through into DISCOM tariffs — the same gatekeeping role state commissions play everywhere. Central support, meanwhile, reaches these projects mainly through viability gap funding rather than any state grant; the mechanics are covered in our VGF explainer.

What this means for you

• If you are a developer or IPP: Chhattisgarh’s opportunity is procured, not subsidised. The CSPDCL packages reward bidders who can execute the same design across many small sites quickly — logistics and standardisation matter more than headline plant engineering. The NVVN project is the opposite: one site, four hours, VGF-supported, 16-year term.
• If you are an equipment supplier: note the block sizes. Twenty MWh at a distribution substation is a containerised-product problem, and the six-package split means volume commitments rather than one-off supply.
• If you are a C&I (commercial and industrial) buyer in Chhattisgarh: state-level battery deployment at your substation should gradually improve local evening supply quality, but it does not replace behind-the-meter storage if you are paying demand charges or running diesel backup today.

Chhattisgarh’s storage programme is young, and tender terms, package structures, VGF eligibility and discovered tariffs change by government notification. Treat every figure here as a July 2026 snapshot and confirm current provisions with CSPDCL, NVVN, CSERC and Ministry of Power documents before committing. You can watch live tenders on our tender tracker, size storage for your own site with the BESS savings calculator, or get in touch.

Policy snapshot as of July 2026. State policy, tender terms, discovered tariffs and VGF eligibility change by government notification; verify current provisions with CSPDCL / CSERC / NVVN / Ministry of Power documents before financial decisions.