Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), the nation’s largest fuel retailer, is planning to foray into energy storage business. The firm is weighing the option of launch of an improved version of lead-acid battery for low cost mobility and industrial applications.
The idea of developing a next-generation energy storage product is also being contemplated by the oil marketer as told by IOC’s Director-Research & Development (R&D)- Dr. S.S.V.Ramakumar to ETEnergyWorld.
Dr. Ramakumar added that the lithium-ion battery technology though superior in performance currently, is ridden with challenges for large scale adoption in Indian market owing to scarce lithium resources ,recycling of lithium and associated environmental hazards with this chemistry.
IOC’s foray into the energy storage market comes at a time the government is working on an ambitious target to ramp up renewable energy generation capacity to 175 Giga Watt by 2022 and also completely shift to e-vehicles by 2030. India added 5,526 Mw of solar capacity during 2016-2017, a growth of 85 percent, and 5,400 MW of wind capacity, 63 percent more than the capacity added previous year.
