The single most-cited number in Indian storage policy is 74 GW / 411 GWh by 2031-32. It comes from the National Electricity Plan (NEP), the ten-year blueprint that the Central Electricity Authority (CEA — the government’s technical planning body under the Ministry of Power) notified in 2023 for the 2022–32 period. It is not a subsidy scheme or a tender. It is an estimate of how much energy storage the grid will need to keep the lights steady as India adds huge amounts of solar and wind.
Precisely, the NEP puts the requirement at 73.93 GW of power capacity and 411.4 GWh of energy capacity by the year 2031-32. Storage is measured in two ways: GW is how fast it can deliver power at any instant, and GWh is how much energy it can store and release over time. A storage project needs enough of both.
The BESS vs pumped-hydro split
The 411 GWh target is not all batteries. It is shared between two technologies:
- Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS): about 47.24 GW / 236.22 GWh — the larger share of the energy target.
- Pumped Storage Plants (PSP — pumped hydro): about 26.69 GW / 175.18 GWh.
Batteries respond in milliseconds and can be built almost anywhere, so they carry the bigger GWh number. Pumped hydro is cheaper per unit of stored energy but is slow to build and needs the right terrain. If you want the deeper technical comparison, see our note on what a BESS actually is.
How it maps to the 500 GW non-fossil goal
The storage target exists to serve a bigger commitment: India’s pledge to reach 500 GW of non-fossil installed capacity by 2030, so that clean sources make up roughly half the power mix. India actually crossed the 50 percent non-fossil milestone in mid-2025, well ahead of schedule.
The catch is that solar and wind are variable — solar stops at sunset, wind comes and goes. Storage is what turns that variable output into firm, dispatchable power. So as renewables scale toward 500 GW, storage has to scale alongside them. The NEP even sets an interim marker: about 16 GW / 82 GWh by 2026-27 on the way to the 2032 number.
The gap and the build-rate it implies
This is where the target gets sobering. Against a 236 GWh BESS goal, India’s operational battery storage in 2025 was still measured in the low hundreds of MWh — roughly reported at around 0.5 to 0.8 GWh. In other words, well over 99 percent of the target is still to be built.
The pipeline is finally catching up. By the end of 2025, credible market trackers reported that over 90 GWh of BESS capacity had been tendered (alongside a large pumped-hydro pipeline). Tendered is not the same as operational — projects still have to be financed, built and commissioned — but it shows the auction machinery is running. Schemes like Viability Gap Funding for BESS and the broader central storage policy framework are the levers meant to close the gap.
Roughly speaking, moving from under 1 GWh to 236 GWh of batteries in about seven years implies adding on the order of 30+ GWh of BESS every year in the back half of the decade — a build rate India has never come close to before.
What this means for you
For developers and EPC firms, the target is a demand signal: the tender flow visible today is only the opening tranche of a multi-year, hundreds-of-GWh programme. For DISCOMs (distribution companies), the storage obligations now being layered on — see our explainer on the Energy Storage Obligation — turn this national number into a compliance requirement on your own procurement. For industrial and C&I buyers, the same falling battery costs that make the national target achievable also make behind-the-meter storage worth costing now, not later.
Alpha Devraj ESS builds standalone and hybrid battery systems sized for exactly this transition — from container-scale grid projects to C&I cabinets. Explore our storage solutions, and when you are ready to translate the national build-out into a project of your own, talk to our team.
The 74 GW / 411 GWh figure is a planning estimate, not a fixed quota — the CEA revises the National Electricity Plan periodically, and later resource-adequacy studies have already floated higher numbers. Treat it as the direction of travel, not a guaranteed ceiling.
Policy snapshot as of July 2026. Targets and plans are revised by the CEA and change by notification; verify current provisions before financial decisions.