IIT-Madras Research Park opens 1MW indigenous battery storage system

• Published 3 months ago
• By SuperAdmin

Developed by its centre for excellence in energy and telecommunications (CEET), it is the first stationary storage system situated in a building in the country, according to Ashok Jhunjhunwala, former president of research park.

CHENNAI: IIT-Madras Research Park (IITMRP) has opened an indigenously designed and developed battery energy storage system (BESS) with a capacity of 1 MWh.

Developed by its centre for excellence in energy and telecommunications (CEET), it is the first stationary storage system situated in a building in the country, according to Ashok Jhunjhunwala, former president of research park.

As the world is moving towards renewable energy sources, the need for large-scale energy storage systems becomes essential. He said these systems should make commercial sense for the adoption to happen.

Speaking at the inauguration, Jhunjhunwala said, “I thought it would be difficult because people would complain and (unclear about) how much to invest. Fortunately, once this is out, our total cost goes down compared to what we pay today. We pay approximately Rs 10 to Rs 10.5 for the electricity. This is cheaper including the depreciation and interest.”

What is our transition approach as far as India is concerned? Making green technology scale with commercial viability. Subsidies are alright to get things started but subsidies cannot scale, we need to make everything commercially viable,” he said, adding that IITMRP is expanding its storage system to 5 MW.

The 1.2 million sq ft research park campus uses around 70 megawatt hours (MWh) of electricity per weekday. With a 1 MW rooftop solar system, 4 MW of group captive solar and 2.1 MW of captive wind power off-site, its renewable-energy usage is nearly 90percent.

The total generated energy will exceed demand or fall short, and the storage system can manage the intermittency and match demand-supply of power round the clock. The battery storage on the campus serves multiple purposes, including excess energy storage, peak shaving, and time-of-day (TOD) usage.

The system’s thermal design, electrical design, battery management hardware and software and controls have been built in-house.

A round-table discussion was held with delegates across industry, startups and academia focusing on renewable energy, which saw participation by Michelle Lujan Grisham, governor of New Mexico, US, Chris Hodges, US Counsel General, Chennai, Palanivel Thiaga Rajan, minister of information technology and digital services, among others.

At the discussion, PTR said Tamil Nadu should achieve a net-zero target by 2050 much before the country’s timeline of 2070. He also mentioned the state has one of the worst transmission losses due to underinvestment on the grid infrastructure.