BHOPAL: Chief Minister Kamal Nath’s ambitious project of power storage and manufacturing is moving ahead cautiously. The global tender has been floated and Expression of Interest (EoI) has been invited for further discussion on the project.
MP would be first state after Delhi to establish a power manufacturing and storage facility, if the project is completed in time.
The MP Power Management Company has invited expressions of interest from energy storage companies firms for setting up 500 MW with 8 hours of continuous discharge of grid-scale energy storage service and a storage manufacturing facility in the state. Also, the storage project should be able to discharge continuously for three hours.
The objective of the EoI is also to invite global players in grid-level energy storage sector and to develop MP as a hub for manufacturing facilities of storage solutions. If sources are to be believed MP Government will prefer the battery storage technology over other alternatives.
Even CM Nath has appreciated the latest invention of Vanadium batteries and its advantages in several programmes. The first power storage plant established in Delhi early this year is also based on same technology.
In its tender document, the MP Power Management Company said that its energy storage options could be in the form of chemical batteries (lithium ion, advanced lead acid, sodium sulphur, flow batteries), pumped storage hydro, compressed air energy storage, flywheels or other forms of storage.
The scope of work further states that the participants are welcome to suggest storage technologies as per their experience, but priority would be given to the ones with a proven track record, and a cost-performance improvement with scale.
MPPCL has also encouraged suggestions from the participants on energy management solutions for the integration of battery-operated facility with the grid and forecasting solutions to better control energy assets. It would test different battery technologies from the participants.