A round-up of the India storage headlines our desk tracked to 28 July 2026 — a quiet close to a busy month, with no new battery tender on the wire. So rather than rehash a single headline, we take stock: what is still open to bid, and what has already been awarded and is now moving toward build. 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.
Live tenders — still open
Three grid-scale battery calls remain at the bidding stage, spanning peaking-duration and long-duration duty:
- 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
GAIL’s 550 MWh rides alongside 600 MW of solar as a firmed-renewable hybrid, 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 peaking-versus-long-duration split 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.
Awarded this month — now moving to build
Earlier in July the auctions that were live for weeks finally closed, and those winners are now shifting from paper to procurement:
- NTPC REL Selects Winner of 100 MWh Vanadium Flow Battery Storage Auction — Mercom India · read our brief
- Kalpa Power secures 100 MWh BESS supply agreement in India — ESS News · read our brief
NTPC REL’s win is one of India’s first utility vanadium redox flow awards — a non-lithium chemistry built for long-duration cycling, which we cover in our vanadium flow batteries in India explainer. On the same stretch, SECI and Tata Power booked large pumped-hydro awards; those sit outside a battery manufacturer’s scope but signal how hard India is pushing every storage lever at once.
The manufacturing base underneath
The tenders above only get built if cells are available, and the month’s supply-side moves matter as much as the procurement:
- India launches tender for 10 GWh battery cell manufacturing capacity for grid storage — ESS News · read our brief
- Pace Digitek opens battery R&D center in India — ESS News · read our brief
The 10 GWh cell tender under the PLI scheme is the bet that domestic supply can keep pace with the grid-scale pipeline — the localisation story we set out in our PLI for ACC battery manufacturing guide.
Wondering what a live tender or a firmed solar-plus-storage system means for your own project? Estimate the numbers with our BESS savings calculator, or talk to our team for a project-specific read.