ACC-PLI scheme: Amara Raja, Exide, L&T, Lucas TVS and Ola Electric among 10 firms looking to set up giga factories in India

Top companies in India including Reliance Industries, Larsen & Toubro, Exide, Amara Raja, Lucas TVS, Mahindra and Mahindra, and Ola Electric Mobility are among the 10 companies that have submitted bids for setting up Advanced Chemistry Cell (ACC) battery storage manufacturing in India.

"This is great news and a major milestone for the Indian energy storage and e-mobility industry. Thanks to NITI Aayog and DHI team for believing in the vision and dedicated work of IESA over the past five years and taking it to the conclusion," said Dr. Rahul Walawalkar, Founder and President, India Energy Storage Alliance (IESA) -- India's only industry alliance focused on promoting advanced energy storage and e-mobility technologies in India since 2012.

"In 2016, IESA set a vision to make India a global hub for advanced energy storage and e-mobility technologies by 2022. Last year, we have upgraded the vision to build on the ACC PLI with a roadmap for 50+ GWh ACC manufacturing capacity by 2027 and scaling it to 100+ GWh of capacity by 2030. IESA is committed to support the building of a complete supply chain ecosystem for making India a global hub for R&D and manufacturing of advanced energy storage technologies," he added.

IESA thanked the leadership of Amitabh Kant, NITI Aayog, and the DHI leadership team including Arun Goyal, Sudhendu Sinha, and  R P Gupta, including the core team of Sujit Jena, Randheer Singh and Aman Hans, who worked tirelessly over the past two years to gather inputs from all interested stakeholders and developed the ACC PLI scheme.

IESA was anticipating 2-3 bids of 15-20GWh, 3 bids of 10+ GWh, and another 3-4 bids of 5-10 GWh totalling 100 GWh+ capacity to be bid in the ACC PLI.

The alliance estimates, the annual demand for ACC batteries will grow from under 10 GWh at present to over 50 GWh by 2025 and over 150 GWh by 2030-- that makes the PLI, a crucial scheme for making India a global hub for R&D and manufacturing of advanced energy storage technologies.

Currently, battery storage finds use in consumer electronics, electric vehicles, storage for renewable energy, data centres, and others -- these sectors are expected to witness robust growth in the coming years, and with that, the demand for battery storage is expected to surge.

As per Indian government estimates, India imports INR 20,000 crore worth of battery storage equipment. 

Further, battery storage is critical to establishing a domestic supply chain for meeting India's ambitious targets of having 30% of car sales to be electric and 50 percent of its energy requirements from renewable energy by 2030.

Debi Prasad Dash, Executive Director of IESA explained that the "ACC PLI program also will kick start investments in the supply chain as the program has a mandate of minimum 60% domestic value addition for receiving the government incentive."

Last December, IESA launched India Battery Supply Chain Council (IBSCC) with 20+ leading supply chain, components, and equipment providers to develop a complete supply chain for supporting giga factories.

"IBSCC is not just for supporting Indian domestic giga factories but the other giga factories being set up in Europe and USA as well," Dash added.

This PLI scheme for Advanced Chemistry Cell (ACC) (₹18,100 crore) along with the already launched PLI Scheme for automotive sector (₹25,938 crore) and Faster Adaption of Manufacturing of Electric Vehicles (FAME) (₹10,000 crore) will enable India to leapfrog from traditional fossil fuel-based automobile transportation system to environmentally cleaner, sustainable, advanced and more efficient Electric Vehicles (EV) based system, MHI stated.