EAC-PM: India Must Boost Grid-Scale Battery Storage

New Delhi, Jul 8 (PTI) The Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) has said that India needs to scale up it's grid-scale battery capacity as the country's electricity challenge has shifted from generating enough power to managing its time of availability and flexibility.

EAC-PM, in a working paper titled 'The Duck and The Camel:Tracing the Net Load on the Indian Power Grid', further said the most direct remedy of electricity challenge is to store energy when it is abundant and release it when it is scarce.

"The defining problem of the Indian grid is no longer how much electricity the country can generate, but when it can generate it and how fast it can change what it generates.

"The binding constraint has shifted from capacity to flexibility," it said.

The paper said the gap between need and provision of storage is the greatest, and it is overwhelmingly a battery gap.

"Grid-scale battery deployment remains well short of the national target, even as pumped hydro has very nearly reached its mark," the paper said, adding that the recent build-out in storage is significant, but a lot more is still required.

On May 21, 2026, India's power grid set an all-time record. At 3:45 PM, the peak demand met reached 270.8 GW, a level greater than any single moment in its history.


India's demand for power is not only large, but also extremely volatile even within the duration of a single day.

The paper said that a large-scale battery build-out can effectively flatten net loads, which is not merely a conjecture.

Citing example, it said the California grid, with a battery fleet large enough to discharge over 10 GW, charges into the midday surplus and discharges into the evening, converting an evening net-load swing of nearly 28 GW into about 10 GW, adjusted for battery discharge.

"This is precisely the capability India will need as its solar fleet expands," it said.

A power grid has to perform a continuous balancing act. At every moment, the total electricity being produced (the 'generation') must match the total being consumed (the 'load').

According to the paper, encouragingly, the regulatory foundation is already being re-laid.

The draft Electricity (Amendment) Bill, 2025, read with the draft Electricity (Rights of Consumers) Amendment Rules, 2026, write energy storage into the Act and into the definition of 'power system' itself.

In addition, it directs the regulator to deepen the power market, including through contracts for difference; converts the renewable-purchase obligation into a nationally-floored non-fossil obligation backed by a monetary penalty; introduces demand response; sets firm deadlines for time-of-day tariffs.