WESD 2023: Asia Pacific going strong on stationary storage

The World Energy Storage Day, celebrated annually on September 22, kicked off on schedule at 6 am Indian Time.

With sessions spanning Manufacturing, E-Mobility, Stationary Storage and Green Hydrogen, the 24-hour-long virtual conference — featuring more than 100 global thought leaders and participants from more than 1,000 organizations — will cover these sectors in depth and take stock of their status around the world before concluding.

ETN is media partner covering the event live and keeping you updated with the sessions.

The session on Stationary Storage for the R1 region (Australia, China, Japan, Korea and parts of Southeast Asia) was moderated by Vinayak Walimbe, Vice President of Emerging Technologies at CES. The panel consisted of Isabel Chatterton of the International Finance Corporation, John Grimes, CEO of Smart Energy Council and Achal Sondhi, Vice President Growth, Asia-Pacific for Fluence.

The IFC is the private arm of the World Bank, and Chatterton took us through the lender's operations while pointing out that Asia accounts for 25 percent of its infrastructure investments. The IFC works with a diverse set of clients, from multinationals and private companies to even local players who are looking to enable energy transition.

Achal Sodhi, pointing to the growth of the industry, supplied the quote of the session, saying five years ago, "If a client came to us with a project for 5 MW, we'd say okay." Then, a few years ago, if the client wanted, "20 MW", I'd say "Okay. But now, if a client comes with anything less than 50 MW, we're not interested".

John Grimes touched upon the strong ramp-up of storage capacity in China and the possible implications of excess supply.