Indian state-owned power producer NTPC has launched a tender for large-scale battery storage, just a few days after the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) also began a similar solicitation process.

The strategic procurement group at NTPC subsidiary NTPC Renewable Energy has opened up for competitive bidding from domestic and international entities to develop 250MW/500MWh of battery energy storage system (BESS).

Bidders will be put into a reverse auction system. The scope of works includes everything from design and engineering to transportation, installation and commissioning, while winners will be responsible for operations and maintenance (O&M) for 12 years from the date of commercial operation start.

The standalone BESS would be connected to India’s Inter-State Transmission System (ISTS) from a site near to Fatehgarh-III substation in Rajasthan.

That’s the same substation for which SECI is tendering to connect 500MW/1,000MWh of BESS through its own tariff-based competitive bidding process which was launched in mid-April, as reported by Energy-Storage.news.

SECI is planning that tender as the first tranche of 4,000MWh of procurement.

NTPC Renewable Energy’s parent company is also thought to be seeking to tender at least 1,000MWh of BESS for deployment at some of its many thermal power plant sites in India – NPTC has a 65GW portfolio of generation assets – and these tenders from state-backed companies have driven great interest in India’s energy storage market.

US BESS manufacturer Powin Energy recently launched a partnership with India energy company O2 Power to take on opportunities including but not limited to those solicitations. Powin senior VP Danny Lu told Energy-Storage.news that it was vitally important to the Oregon-headquartered manufacturer to find a partner like O2 which had experience of and understood the Indian market deeply, especially when it came to tendering, which Lu said can be unique and specific to local market conditions.

Respondents to NTPC Renewable Energy’s latest tender must put in their bids by 6 June. They must be able to prove track record and meet annual turnover requirements, while the BESS equipment put in place has to experience less than 2.5% degradation of MWh capacity annually and retain 70% of capacity by the end of the 12 year contract term.

Full details of the tender can be seen in NTPC’s document here.

Last week, Energy-Storage.news reported that NTPC had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to explore the possibility of working with Energy Vault, a European-American startup working to commercialise a novel form of gravity-based mechanical energy storage.