LEADING ESS COMPANIES OF THE WORLD – AES & PANASONIC UNVEILED HUGE INTEREST IN THE INDIAN MARKET WITH THEIR PARTICIPATION AT ENERGY STORAGE INDIA 2015. EXCITING TIMES AHEAD FOR ENERGY STORAGE IN INDIA!
New Delhi, 12 January 2016 – The Energy Storage India Conference and Expo announced its third consecutive success, which completed on the 9th December 2015 at the India Habitat Centre, organised by Customized Energy Solutions & Messe Düsseldorf India and powered by India Energy Storage Alliance.
The Pre-Conference Workshop on 7th December held along with the Conference and Expo on 8th – 9th December attracted 720 delegates from 16+ countries. 80+ speakers shared their knowledge and views with the participants leaving a prominent image of the show. ESI yet again proved to be the largest and finest gathering ever held in India casing the niche topics and discussions.
During the event, Speakers & Delegates mulled over on a number of key issues for the Indian market like realising a more modern and resilient grid by incorporating proven and innovative energy storage solutions; assessment of energy storage needs towards power generation and transmission networks; creating an open market leading to decrease in costs for energy storage technologies; need for switching from diesel generators to energy storage systems, etc. They also raised concerns over increasing air emissions which are accelerating the retirement of an aging grid infrastructure in the country, leaving utilities and regulators faced with critical planning decisions.
Top bureaucrats from Ministry of New & Renewable Energy (MNRE), Government of India reiterated in the conference that they are currently in process of gathering inputs from various stakeholders to introduce specific policies to fast track adoption of storage technologies in India. As part of this effort, MNRE released Expression of Interest for demonstration projects in September, which received tremendous response from all the stakeholders. Currently, MNRE team is evaluating over 40 proposals and will soon announce shortlisted projects for demonstration of both off-grid / microgrid as well as large scale renewable integration applications. MNRE hopes to learn from these demonstration projects in India as well as from existing experience of deployment of storage around the globe, so that the policy environment can be adapted to enable large scale integration. This would also necessitate policies encouraging manufacturing in India and the rapid evolution of technologies.
The recent developments at COP21 in Paris highlighted the importance of Energy Storage Systems for Renewable Energy in India. India has proposed reducing carbon emissions to a tune of 33% to 35% by the year 2030 as compared to 2005, and specifically mentioning energy storage in its INDC. This will be the way ahead to achieve the storage technology in the future. Grid balancing on one hand and envisaged huge renewable capacity on the other is a challenge looking at the intermittent nature of renewable energy and its solution is none other than energy storage. Hence, the need for “Energy Storage Mission” was echoed during the conference.
ESI 2015 covered key topics like Energy Storage Technologies, Advanced Manufacturing and Microgrids Initiatives. The conference also highlighted Regulatory and Policies (National Storage Mission), Renewable Integration, ‘Make In India’ Focus, India Policy Vision, Investments & Finances and Electric Mobility.
The event was attended by the business and industry focused group which included utilities, developers, energy storage OEMs, solution providers, regulatory & policy makers, industry stakeholders & commercial/industrial end users. The audience was also able to hear from the Govt. of India officials like Shri Upendra Tripathy (Secretary – MNRE), Shri Rajan Katoch (Secretary – Ministry of Heavy Industries & Public Enterprises), Ms. Jyoti Arora (Joint Secretary – Ministry of Power), Shri Tarun Kapoor (Joint Secretary – MNRE, Ms. Varsha Joshi (Joint Secretary – MNRE), Shri Abhay Damle (Joint Secretary – Ministry of Road Transport and Highways), Dr. P. C Pant (Director – Ministry of New & Renewable Energy), and Dr. Satish Agnihotri, Former Secretary Coordination, Cabinet Secretariat & Conference Chair – Energy Storage India 2015.
Energy Storage India extends its heartfelt gratitude to Ministry of New & Renewable Energy (MNRE) for being the Principal Supporter, AES as the Title Sponsor, Panasonic as the Platinum Sponsor, ACME & Sun Group as Gold Sponsors, Regen Powertech, SAFT & Siemens as Silver Sponsors, Exide Industries as the Tea & Coffee Break Sponsor, and Exhibitors for their relentless support. ESI is also thankful to its 30 Key Industry Partners and 33 Media Partners for their contribution for shaping a successful event.
Some quotes from key participants at ESI 2015:
Dr. Upendra Tripathy, Secretary, MNRE, GOI: “It is a good occasion to interact with experts & in fact we have already scheduled some discussions with the Global Energy Storage Alliance. This actually helps us to make policies in the future.” Rajan Katoch, Secretary, Ministry of Heavy Industries & Public Enterprises, GOI: “I would like to welcome this initiative because right now there is push for renewables especially Solar from the Govt. & if it really works the way we are aiming, there will be a huge explosion in demand and with that we need storage, otherwise it doesn’t work!”
Dr. Satish Agnihotri, Former Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat, GOI: “Storage is a huge missing link in the entire energy story. A conference like this brings different stakeholders together, so you will see very remarkable transfer of information happening.”
Varsha Joshi, Joint Secretary, MNRE, GOI: “It’s very good to have this kind of event because so many people have come together, I am sure lot of deals could be made within this environment itself. For us, as Policy Makers, it is very important to get feedback from the industry about the expectations from us, so that we could also work out solutions that could work out good in the interest of public & the industry, since both of them are important to us.”
Chris Shelton, Vice President – New Energy Solutions, The AES Corporation: “It’s been a great conference, a lot of people have come together from Govt. agencies & bodies representing clarity in where they wants to go and how they want to define the market. We are looking forward to getting a lot more concrete information on how this market can develop for energy storage, obviously, it’s a tremendous opportunity here in India for energy storage to make the system more efficient, to save costs, improve the liability on the electric grid and support the massive amounts of renewables planned here”
Yoshi Yamada, Executive Vice President, Member of Board Panasonic Corporation:“It’s very important to learn more about the Indian Market through this conference because a lot of experts are attending this conference & a lot of users are also attending this conference. So it is very important to us to participate in this event”
Uday Khemka, Vice Chairman, Sun Group: “It’s get absolutely structurally inevitable that storage in India is going to be huge, that the Govt. understands that & they are trying to get ahead of it. And just as we have had missions in other areas that have been extremely productive, the missions in this area also will also generate forward looking & progressive policies, I have no doubt about that!”
Sunil Jain, CEO & MD, Hero Future Energies:“I am amazed to see the knowledge here people have on the storage, I am taking a lot knowledge & intelligence back from this conference. I would love to get back again to this conference. Robert Galyen, Chairperson, NAATBatt:“I think each year we are seeing growth in the exhibition segment of it which is good because people now can lay hands on and see the products that people have to market which will help accelerate growth in this market.”
Bud Collins, CEO, NEC Energy Solutions Inc.: “What I have seen here so far is telling me that I need to come and expand our capabilities in India because it is going to be a tremendous market for energy storage, not only energy storage but enabling electricity to reach every home in an efficient manner.”
Jill Yang, Sales Manager, Zhejiang Narada Power Source Co., Ltd: “It’s a very wonderful exhibition, an excellent platform to show our products”
Manish Kumar, MD Distributed Energy, The AES Corporation: “The response has been very positive, very encouraging & there is a lot of excitement in the people. I don’t think they are hearing it for the first time but I think they are very excited about the potential of energy storage”
