Aiming to double cumulative lithium energy storage deployment in telecom sector to 2 GWh Amara Raja

New Delhi, Apr 21 (PTI) Amara Raja Energy & Mobility Ltd is looking to double cumulative lithium energy storage deployment in the telecom sector to 2 gigawatt-hour this year having crossed the 1 gigawatt-hour milestone, its Executive Director, Vikram Gourineni said on Tuesday.
     The company is now looking to take it to the next level with new lithium solutions for its successful businesses like UPS, data center and new applications like energy storage, Gourineni told PTI.
     It is also adding a new line to make fully integrated packs and containers for Energy Storage Systems (ESS) at its facility in Telangana, where the company had in 2022 announced an investment of Rs 9,500 crore over a ten year period to set up research and manufacturing facilities for lithium-ion battery making.
     The company said it crossed the 1 gigawatt-hour (GWh) of cumulative lithium energy storage deployment in the telecom sector from across 50,000 sites nationwide.
     "Our telecom rollout has been very successful in lithium. We've traditionally been market leaders in telecom, even with our lead acid product for several decades now. We continue to lead the market, even as the chemistry has changed to lithium," Gourineni said.
     On the company crossing the 1 GWh with lithium in telecom sector, he said,"It shows that the technology, the product, is getting mature... while it took us about two-three years to do 1 GWh in telecom, this year itself, we'll be doing almost double of that."
     Stating that the company is "very bullish on our ability to take this to the next level", he said,"It also opens up a very clear pathway for other product segments in which we are very successful today, like UPS and data center, and now getting into even new applications like energy storage with new lithium solutions."
     Amara Raja Energy & Mobility said its milestone in the telecom sector comes amid a structural shift in India's energy demand, as the ongoing 5G rollout, rapid expansion of data centre capacity, and increasing integration of renewable energy drive the need for reliable, flexible, and high-performance storage solutions.
     With lithium storage approaching lifecycle cost parity with conventional technologies while delivering superior operational efficiency, India's battery storage ecosystem is crossing early scale thresholds backed by national targets of 236 GWh by 2032 and strong policy support, it noted.
     Stating that energy storage solutions (ESS) is seeing healthy growth all around the world, Gourineni said,"In the next two to three years, I can say with a bit of confidence that a larger part of our growth is going to come on the heels of this energy storage wave that's coming right now."
     With more and more the geopolitical events and conflicts around the world are suggesting that countries have to start prioritising energy security, and energy sovereignty, he said,"ESS helps us to fully utilise the type of free resources we have in the country, whether it's our solar, our wind or hydro."
     He further said,"Having ESS actually enables you to not depend on six hour eight hour blocks of renewable energy generation. It can actually get around the clock renewable power."
     Gourineni said while the cell capacity at its Telangana facility "looks more or less the same, the mix will change maybe a little bit more, favoring ESS now".
     "We are building a brand new facility to make fully integrated packs and containers for ESS in the same location. We are breaking ground next week on that and we should be starting production by the end of November of this year," he added.
     Amara Raja Energy & Mobility Business Head, Industrial Batteries, Venkata Krishna said the scale that the company has built within telecom - along with the systems, execution capability, and customer relationships, positions it to expand into adjacent segments such as data centres, industrial applications, and commercial infrastructure.

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)