More than a big battery
The battery is the muscle; the system around it is what makes it an asset. Inside a containerised BESS:
- Cells and packs. Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) dominates stationary storage — thermally stable, no cobalt or nickel, thousands of full cycles. Cells (100–628 Ah prismatic classes) are graded, matched and assembled into packs.
- BMS — Battery Management System. Watches every cell’s voltage, current and temperature, balances the pack and enforces safe limits. Nothing charges or discharges outside its envelope.
- PCS — Power Conversion System. The bidirectional inverter between DC batteries and the AC grid; sets power quality and response speed.
- EMS — Energy Management System. The economist: decides when to charge and discharge against tariffs, schedules and forecasts.
- Thermal management. Liquid cooling holds cells in a narrow temperature band — higher sustained power, slower ageing, especially in Indian ambient conditions.
- Fire safety. Cell-level monitoring, off-gas detection, integrated suppression, engineered separation — layered, and tested at the factory.
What a BESS actually does
The same hardware earns in different ways depending on where it sits:
| Where | Job |
|---|---|
| Factory or commercial site | Peak shaving, Time-of-Day arbitrage, backup |
| Solar or wind plant | Firming variable generation into schedulable supply |
| Grid substation | Frequency response, reserves, grid stabilization |
| Campus or remote site | Backbone of a microgrid that can island from the grid |
The purest form is a standalone BESS — no co-located generation, just the battery working the tariff and the grid.
Form factors and scale
Systems ship as outdoor cabinets (hundreds of kWh), 20-foot containers (multi-MWh — up to 6.25 MWh per unit), and grid blocks — arrays of containers controlled as one plant, from 20 MWh to gigawatt-hour class. See our products for the three form factors on one platform.
What it costs
In India in 2026, grid-scale turnkey systems cost around ₹1.5–1.8 crore per MWh, with costs falling year on year — the full picture is in our BESS price guide, and your own numbers are a minute away in the savings calculator.