India’s ACME Solar places multi-gigawatt-hour BESS order with Chinese players

While the company did not reveal the split of the order, ACME Solar said deliveries would take place in a phased manner over the next four to eight months for projects due to be commissioned within the next 12 to 18 months across multiple Indian states.

ACME Solar did hint that the main destination of the BESS equipment will be multiple Firm & Dispatchable Renewable Energy (FDRE) projects, as well as projects of other types that feature batteries.

FDRE is one of the three main types of clean energy projects featuring energy storage that are being tendered across India by a combination of national and regional organisations, from the government Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) to state-owned power producers like NTPC and regional bulk electricity purchasers and distributors.

As explained in a recent Guest Blog for this site by India Energy Storage Alliance (IESA) president Debmalya Sen, FDRE tenders are tenders for renewable energy and storage with specific requirements.

For example, some FDRE tenders require 4-hour dispatch of energy on a 90% of installed capacity basis to offtakers at predetermined peak hours agreed on a day-ahead basis. Others might require a load-following model, round-the-clock (RTC) delivery of power or delivery of power during regularly defined peaks.

In its full-year results for the 2025 financial year (FY2025), which ended 31 March, ACME Solar said it signed 1,890MW of power purchase agreements (PPAs), including 1,590MW FDRE and 300MW hybrid (renewables-plus-storage) capacity. It received letters of award (LOAs) for 2,050MW of capacity, including 1,000MW FDRE, 600MW of solar PV and 450MW of hybrid capacity.

Back in July 2024, Energy-Storage.news reported ACME Solar as one of the winners in a SECI tender for hybrid solar-plus-storage, making a winning bid of IR3.42/kWh (US$0.04) for 350MW capacity.

More recently, ACME Solar was awarded its first standalone BESS projects through a tender hosted by another national power producer, NHPC. Announced just over a week ago, NHPC selected ACME Solar bids for a 50MW/100MWh project in Kuppam and a 225MW/450MWh project in Ghani, both in the state of Andra Pradesh.

A week prior to that, it announced another win with NHPC, for a 250MW FDRE project in Rajasthan. ACME Solar signed a 25-year PPA with NHPC for that project.

As of the end of FY2025, the IPP had a total operational capacity of 2,705MW and 4,265MW under construction, mostly solar PV with some wind. It brought online a 1,200MW standalone solar PV project in Rajasthan during the year, and the operational capacity in its portfolio increased by more than 100% in FY2025.

Suppliers Trina Storage and Narada Power will be familiar names to readers of Energy-Storage.news.

Trina Storage is the energy storage business unit of vertically integrated solar PV manufacturer Trinasolar.

It entered the energy storage market in 2021, and the most recent iteration of its grid-scale BESS solution, Elementa 2, launched in 2024.

Trina Storage had deployed more than 10GWh of its Elementa series worldwide as of the end of last year, beginning with an initial focus on China before moves into the UK, US, mainland Europe and other markets, including Latin America and Australia. It also recently completed its first projects in Japan.

Narada Power, meanwhile, recently began mass production of its newest liquid-cooled energy storage system, Center L Ultra. Announced at the beginning of this month, Center L Ultra has up to 6.25MWh storage capacity within a 20-foot standard containerised form factor, compatible with large format 783Ah and 587Ah battery cells.

In a separate announcement, Narada Power said this week that it had received a 1.4GWh BESS order from an unnamed IPP in India. Inviting speculation that it referred to ACME Solar, Narada Power said the supply deal was for a large-scale solar photovoltaic project featuring batteries at a single site.