FDRE tenders seek to guarantee the supply of renewable energy to entities connected to the Inter-State Transmission System (ISTS) across India, particularly at times of peak demand when solar PV may not be generating. As such, bids require an energy storage component to make the renewable power dispatchable.
In the case of the latest round, the fourth held by SECI to date, energy must be dispatched at an 80% Demand Fulfillment Ratio (DFR) in hourly blocks between peak hours from 1 April to 31 October. These are defined in SECI documents as 00:00 to 01:00, 14:30 to 16:30, and 21:00 to 24:00 each day during that period.
During the rest of the year, resources must deliver energy with a DFR of 90% on a monthly average basis.
Five bidders were awarded capacity, with tariffs of IR4.98/kWh (US$0.059/kWh) for the lowest three and IR4.99/kWh for the remaining two. They can be seen in the table below. Serentica Renewables bid with 250MW, but was awarded 100MW, as the above bidders already accounted for 530MW of the total 630MW up for award.
| Bidder | Quoted tariff (IR) | Loaded tariff (IR) | Bid quantity |
| Vena Energy | 4.98 | 4.98 | 100MW |
| Hero Solar Energy | 4.98 | 4.98 | 100MW |
| JSW Neo Energy | 4.98 | 4.98 | 230MW |
| Hexa Climate Solutions | 4.99 | 4.99 | 100MW |
| Serentica Renewables | 4.99 | 4.99 | 250MW (100MW awarded) |
Frameworks for the award of Firm Dispatchable Renewable Energy on a competitive tariff-based bidding model were published by the Union Government of India’s Ministry of Power in 2023.
While as of last month, a total of 10 tenders had been launched by various state agencies including SECI and power producer NTPC, totalling 12.1GW of renewable capacity, they have faced a few challenges along the way, in some cases requiring reconfigurations and amendments to make their terms less demanding for developers.
Expert Debmalya Sen, India lead for advanced energy solutions at the World Economic Forum (WEF) noted in a LinkedIn post that PPAs have been signed for 1.2GW to date, just over 8GW has been awarded or in the RFP stage, while 3.7GW has been cancelled.
For instance, from a 3GW NTPC tender and 1.5GW tendered by SECI in its second round of FDRE tenders, only 2.1GW was awarded, Sen noted.
For the newest FDRE IV procurement, SECI made some amendments between its launch in September 2023 and the reverse auction this week.
These included making the peak time DFR ratio less demanding, bringing it down from 90% to 80% and reducing the tendered amount from 1260MW to 630MW. The load profile was also changed from 15-minute to hourly blocks.
BRPL and BYPL will procure 625MW of dispatchable capacity and GIFT Plc 5MW.
The DFR will be furthered reduced for FDRE V, which Debmalya Sen commented may lead to a still lower price discovery for tariff bids.
Further information on SECI’s FDRE IV tender can be seen here.
Sterling & Wilson awarded 1,000MWh BESS EPC contract
Engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) firm Sterling & Wilson’s has been awarded a contract for 500MW/1,000MWh of standalone battery energy storage system (BESS) project work in India.
The India-headquartered firm’s renewable energy arm made the announcement today to the National Stock Exchange of India, noting that this would be the country’s largest BESS project to date, due to be executed by the end of 2025.
The firm said in the same announcement that it has also been awarded a contract to work on a 20MW floating solar PV project in the state of Karnataka. According to Sterling & Wilson, the total value of the two contracts is around IR3.28 billion (US$39.16 million).
The EPC contractor said both project orders came from the same client, but did not name it. However, according to a source Energy-Storage.news spoke to, it is very likely to be JSW Renew Energy Five, a subsidiary of JSW Energy, which is in the portfolio of Indian conglomerate JSW Group.
JSW Group won SECI’s first pilot tender for standalone battery storage, splitting the 1,000MWh capacity across two equally sized 250MW/500MWh projects, as reported by this site in January 2023. This is thought to be the project that Sterling & Wilson referred to. In addition to EPC work, Sterling & Wilson Renewable Energies will also carry out testing and commissioning of the systems.
India’s energy storage tenders, including FDRE, round-the-clock supply and standalone BESS tenders have been credited with kickstarting the country’s market and bringing down prices.
As of March this year, around 219MWh of BESS was online across the country, mostly paired with solar PV, but with India’s government targeting 500GW of new non-fossil fuel energy by 2030, including 450GW from solar PV and wind, the need for storage is acute, while beyond the 2030 timeframe, the national Central Electricity Authority (CEA) has modelled a need for 320GW/2,380GWh by 2047, about two-thirds from batteries in megawatt terms and the remainder from pumped hydro energy storage (PHES).