Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Limited (UPPCL) has issued its second standalone Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) tender with a capacity of 375 MW/1500 MWh, marking a significant step forward in the state’s energy storage journey.
This follows the earlier BESS tender for Uttar Pradesh floated by NVVN, which concluded with a discovered tariff of INR 6.64/kWh for a 4-hour, one-cycle system.
With this new tender, Uttar Pradesh continues to strengthen its commitment to advancing grid-scale energy storage solutions.
The current tender is also significant because this is the second case where the developer of the BESS (BESSD) has been made responsible for charging (BESSD) compared to traditional models. There is a specification to the charging window, which is 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM and no dispatch can be made.
The project will be based on the Build-Own-Operate (BOO) model. The developers must make land available close to the UPPTCL substations with a minimum interconnection voltage of 132 kV at the State Transmission Utility (STU) level.
The major business and technical ones are a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) of 15 years, and one full daily cycle can be divided into two partial ones. The minimum and maximum bid capacities are established at 62.5 MW/250 MWh and 187.5 MW/750 MWh, respectively. The system has to ensure a minimum monthly availability of 95 and any under-delivery will be punished by 1.5 times the quoted tariff. Although Round-trip Efficiency (RtE) is not mentioned directly, availability will be the only performance measure.
The maximum degradation allowed is 2 per annum. The purchasing party ensures 100 percent off-take and has a binding financial commitment despite non-requisition. In the event that power is not used, BESSD could bid power exchanges at the price, being a price taker. Such third-party sales will be divided equally between BESSD and the buyer in terms of revenues.
The commissioning period will be 18 months, which may be extended by six months with liquidated damages. The project can access Viability Gap Funding (VGF) of INR 18 lakh/MWh in three installments: 20% of the amount over financial closure, 50% over commissioning and 30% over one year of operation. The developers should finance the project in 12 months of signing of the BEDPA. Tariffs should be quoted in INR/kWh and bids with the range of L1 + 2% will be taken into account.
On this tender, over 50 percent of the 15.5 GWh VGF Tranche 2 allocation has been tendered. Previous tenders are Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Maharashtra (adding up to 4 GWh); Andhra Pradesh (2 GWh); and currently Uttar Pradesh (1.5 GWh). The other states that are still to tender are Karnataka (2 GWh), Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu (1.5 GWh each), and five states with 500 MWh each.
