Is Discom health tripping the energy storage sector?

In India’s energy sector, it seems you can’t take a step without tripping on the most vexatious problem ever, namely, the health of discoms. The country’s various electricity distribution companies (discoms), which are utilities, mostly owned by the state governments, have run up huge losses and are saddled with mighty amounts of debt, politics and populism being at the bottom of the issue. Now it looks like the problem is stunting the growth of India’s nascent energy storage sector. The hurdleThe issue is this. A recent study of the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) has predicted that to meet India’s ambitious target of 450 GW of renewable energy by 2030, the country would need 27GW/108GWhr of grid-scale Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS)—in addition to the proposed pumped hydro storage of 10GW—by 2030. We are running out of time, so it is necessary to start…

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