Beyond two-wheelers and three-wheelers, I see Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) becoming a major battery application in India over the next three to five years.

The reason is fairly straightforward. As more solar and wind power comes onto the grid, we will need storage that can hold energy when it is available and make it available when demand is higher. The Central Electricity Authority’s National Electricity Plan estimates a BESS requirement of 34.72 GWh by 2026–27 and 236.22 GWh by 2031–32. The government has also introduced measures such as viability gap funding to support BESS deployment.

At Neuron, we started looking at this opportunity from that perspective. Our Talegaon facility in Maharashtra is a 5 GWh BESS manufacturing facility spread across seven acres, with an investment of ₹100 crore. It is designed to produce up to 1,000 containerised BESS units a year for applications including solar and grid infrastructure.

But the industry still has some practical issues to solve. The conversation cannot be limited to how much storage we can manufacture. Cost, battery life, thermal management, safety, efficiency and recycling will matter just as much. The supply chain for cells and other critical components will also need to become more robust as volumes increase.

I also think battery chemistry will remain an area of active development. At Neuron, we are looking at technologies such as sodium-ion, aluminium-air and solid-state batteries alongside the chemistries being used today.

For me, the interesting part is that the battery industry is moving beyond just powering vehicles. We are now looking at how the same underlying technology can help store renewable power and support a more flexible electricity system. That will open up a very different set of applications for battery companies in India.

BESS is becoming an important opportunity for battery manufacturers, but I don’t see it as simply an extension of the EV battery business. Stationary storage brings a different set of requirements, particularly around long operating life, system reliability, safety and how the battery performs under different usage patterns.

What makes the opportunity interesting is that BESS can serve several parts of the power system. It can be used alongside renewable projects, support peak demand, provide backup and help manage fluctuations in power supply. As these applications grow, battery companies will have to think beyond the battery pack and focus more on the complete system.

For manufacturers, this means building expertise across areas such as BMS, thermal management, monitoring, testing and system integration. These capabilities will become increasingly important because the performance expected from a BESS system can vary significantly depending on its application.

I also expect battery chemistry to remain an important area of development. Lithium-ion will continue to have a role, but technologies such as sodium-ion and other emerging chemistries could become relevant for applications where cost, availability, safety or operating conditions are different.

The bigger shift, in my view, is that batteries are becoming part of the energy infrastructure itself. That changes the conversation from simply making batteries to designing systems that can deliver predictable performance over many years. For battery manufacturers, building this kind of application-specific expertise will be important as energy storage becomes a larger part of the power sector.

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