A round-up of the India storage headlines our desk tracked to 24 July 2026 — no new battery tender opened today, so the story is the supply chain building out behind the tenders already on the street. For the running list of live opportunities see our tender tracker; if you are weighing a bid, our how-to-bid a BESS tender guide walks through the steps.
Manufacturing & R&D
The day’s lead item was domestic capability rather than procurement. Pace Digitek opened a battery R&D centre in India — the same manufacturer whose 1.25 GWh of first-year BESS output we covered earlier this month, now putting design and development work onshore alongside assembly:
R&D onshoring matters for tender bidders because domestic-content and Make-in-India conditions increasingly reach past final assembly. The same logic sits behind the country’s 10 GWh advanced cell manufacturing tender and the wider PLI ACC battery manufacturing scheme.
Policy moves
On the policy side, standalone solar module makers asked for an 18-month extension to ALMM List-II — the approved list governing domestically manufactured solar cells. It is a solar-side ask rather than a storage one, but it shapes the timelines of the solar-plus-storage hybrids that now account for much of India’s battery procurement:
Market view
Analysts also published a broader read on the sector, flagging price and supply volatility as the counterweight to India’s fast-growing battery demand:
- India’s battery boom: Navigating volatility and unlocking opportunities — pv magazine India
Volatility is exactly why fixed-scope supply terms matter on a bid — our BESS price guide for India sets out what actually moves a delivered ₹/kWh number.
Still live
No new battery tender opened today, so the pipeline is unchanged from earlier in the week. These calls remain at the bidding stage:
- GAIL Tenders 600 MW Solar Plus 550 MWh Battery Storage Project — Mercom India · read our brief
- POWERGRID Tenders 500 MW/1,000 MWh Battery Energy Storage Projects — Mercom India · read our brief
- Rajasthan Tenders 172 MW/688 MWh Battery Energy Storage Projects — Mercom India · read our brief
- India launches global tender for 10 GWh advanced battery cell manufacturing under PLI scheme — pv magazine India · read our brief
POWERGRID’s 1,000 MWh over 500 MW is a 2-hour system and Rajasthan’s 688 MWh over 172 MW is a 4-hour one — the difference between peaking and long-duration duty, which we unpack in our 2-hour vs 4-hour BESS explainer. Tender terms and deadlines change by notification — always verify the current bid documents on the issuing utility’s portal before acting.
Wondering what a live tender or a domestic-content condition means for your own project? Estimate the numbers with our BESS savings calculator, or talk to our team for a project-specific read.