Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu unveiled India's first thermal battery plant in Amaravati on Monday. The plant will manufacture an energy storage device which will store renewable energy for various purposes and thereby reduce carbon emissions. The plant is expected to commence commercial operations by May 2019.
Manufactured by Bharat Energy Storage Technology (BEST) Private Limited, this device will help store energy for commercial vehicles and highway recharge points and is expected to be of great help in hilly and remote areas.
The device, known as High Energy Density Storage (HEDS), is a technology that was invented and patented by Dr Patrick Glenn in 2016. These devices cost the same as the erstwhile lithium-based batteries, which have a limited life.
BEST is coming up with a greenfield facility in Andhra Pradesh to manufacture these batteries at an investment of Rs 660 crores. This facility is expected to create 3,000 jobs in a span of three years.
Initially, the facility is expected to operate at a capacity of 1,000 megawatts which will later be increased to 10 gigawatts by 2025. These batteries are better than solar panels, which depend on weather conditions and are expensive to maintain. The batteries are expected to reduce the country’s dependence on fossil fuels and other non-renewable sources of energy.
According to a report, the greenfield facility will manufacture batteries suitable for telecommunications, mini-grids
The facility will also manufacture storage devices that are environment-friendly and do not use hard metal or inflammable substances but around 95 per cent re-usable materials. The company also aims at curtailing global warming and carbon emissions and also helping the Government of India achieve its vision of electricity-enabled mobility by 2030.