Power Grid Corporation of India (POWERGRID) has invited bids to set up a battery energy storage system (BESS) with a capacity of 5 MW/20 MWh, co-located with an 85 MW solar project at Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh.

Approximately 1,000 square meters of land has been identified for this system at Ujjain’s 85 MW Nagda solar project.

Bids must be submitted by June 16, 2025. Bids will be opened on the same date.

Bidders must submit a tender fee of ₹25,000 (~$292.47).

The scope of work entails the design, manufacture, transportation and insurance, storage, erection, testing, and commissioning of the BESS project. The project must include battery management systems, bidirectional inverters (power conditioning systems), fire protection systems, ventilation, air conditioning, illumination systems, and a cable trench.

It must also include the BESS’ energy management system with control and communication systems for monitoring and controlling the storage’s required parameters. Additionally, it must incorporate DC-DC coupler converters.

Selected bidders must also complete the project’s associated civil works.

They must design the BESS to operate for four hours and integrate it into the grid through the existing inverter duty transformer (IDT) via the bidirectional inverter and DC-DC coupler converters.

The storage system must have an average of one daily charging and discharging cycle. It must be charged using solar power and discharged to the grid through the existing IDT.

Selected bidders must maintain a minimum system availability of 95% for the project annually. They must also guarantee a DC to AC system efficiency of over 86% throughout the contract’s tenure.

The project must be designed for interconnection with the intra-state substation through the existing network of the 85 MW solar project, per the existing regulations in this regard.

Failure to provide the required system availability will attract liquidated damages. Damages for failure to ensure system efficiency will be ₹20 (~$0.23)/kWh of energy lost beyond what would have been lost if the efficiency was 86%.

The bidders are advised to visit the 85 MW solar project at Nagda and familiarize themselves with the topography, infrastructure, and the design philosophy.

Bidders must have supplied a minimum storage capacity of 10 MWh for stationary grid applications in any of the last three years. This capacity must have been provided using the same technology and batteries offered in the bids.

Recently, POWERGRID selected Smart Roof Solar Solutions and Gourav EnerGen India as winners of its auction to implement 3 MW of rooftop solar systems on its buildings in India’s western regions under the PM Surya Ghar: Muft Bijli Yojana.