Vedanta's Serentica switches on the first 200 MWh of a 1 GWh battery in Rajasthan
Vedanta's renewable arm Serentica has commissioned the first 200 MWh of a planned 1 GWh battery in Bikaner, its entry into utility-scale storage, and the first step in a 7 GWh pipeline to give industry round-the-clock clean power.
Serentica Renewables, the Vedanta Group's clean-energy arm, has commissioned the first 200 MWh phase of a planned 1 GWh battery storage project in Bikaner, its entry into utility-scale storage aimed at giving energy-hungry industries round-the-clock renewable power.
Storage is the missing piece in India's energy transition: solar and wind are cheap but intermittent, while heavy industry needs firm, 24-hour supply to swap coal for clean electricity. Batteries that soak up daytime solar and release it after dark are how "round-the-clock" renewable power becomes real, and Serentica is positioning to sell that firmness to commercial and industrial buyers.
The first phase stores surplus daytime generation and discharges it during peak and night-time demand, and the company says it supports one of the world's first time-block round-the-clock renewable arrangements for industrial consumers, built on a modular, scalable design. It is the first step in a bigger plan: Serentica said it is building a 7 GWh battery order pipeline over the next two years, targeting one of India's largest C&I storage portfolios.
Serentica, backed by Vedanta, supplies firm and dispatchable renewable energy to industrial users. It recently signed a power-purchase agreement with NTPC to supply 200 MW of such power to Uttar Pradesh distribution utilities, and in July raised about $345 million in Asian Development Bank-led debt for a solar-wind hybrid in Karnataka.
The Bikaner unit is small against both the 7 GWh ambition and the country's needs, the Central Electricity Authority sees India requiring more than 400 GWh of storage by 2032, but it is one of the first commercial-scale examples of a battery delivering 24x7 clean power to industry.
