US major Fluence mulls battery energy storage system manufacturing base in India

Zahurancik said the company, backed by US-based energy giant AES and Siemens, has started discussions with domestic partners to localize the production of battery energy storage system (BESS) components and is considering India as a potential export hub for Asia Pacific and neighboring markets.

Fluence, based in Virginia, USA, is among the world’s largest battery storage providers with approximately 25% market share. It has production facilities in the USA and Vietnam.

Zahurancik said the company’s production plans for India are still in the prototype stage and timelines for commercial sales have not yet been finalized.

“To guarantee high quality in these parts, we will continue to expand our production and continue to explore, especially housing control systems and others,” Zahurancik said. Mint. “So we are looking at manufacturing in India. We already have some manufacturing in Vietnam, so we continue to look for opportunities to invest there because we see the scale of that growing every year.”

Fluence caters to industrial groups and companies in the utilities and independent power producers (IPP) sectors. It had installed India’s first megawatt-scale grid-connected battery storage capacity with a 10 MW/10 MWh project in Delhi for Tata Power Delhi Distribution Ltd in 2019.

The company has a global innovation center in Bengaluru focusing on research and development, engineering, product development and services.

When asked about the company’s plans to export components from India, Zahurancik said: “We have a big presence in India through our global innovation hub and so we have made a big commitment to the people in India.” “It’s one of our largest single offices, and that’s where we continue to hire a lot of talent and our product development organization, and then that naturally translates into us looking at how to use Indian vendors for manufacturing here in India and shipping across the region. We don’t have a specific date on that, but it’s an active part of what we do now.”

He said the company’s process of diversifying geographies began during the covid-19 pandemic due to supply chain issues and restrictions in various countries regarding Chinese products. He noted that while Europe and India are the company’s key markets, it is looking to expand its production bases, with plans for Europe largely in the slow lane.

“During Covid, most of the production was coming from Vietnam and China. Then, in the Covid and post-Covid period, we found that it became very difficult to provide timelines and quality to our customers when shipping was disrupted all over the world,” Zahurancik said. he said. “There were times when it cost us more to bring in goods from abroad than it did to produce the goods in those countries. So we started down the path of diversifying the supply chain, so we added some production in the U.S. We were working on a plan to add production in Europe, and that went a little bit sideways because of some changes that were happening there with different battery vendors.”

Speaking of Europe, the executive said that “a local battery supply has not yet emerged very strongly in Europe” but that the company has begun to relocate some other parts of the system. “We source most of the inverters and other parts from Europe, and then we look at the Asia Pacific region and say where else do we need to go beyond the facilities we already have in Vietnam. So I think India is one of the countries where we continue to look and see the possibility of strong growth.”

Fluence’s president of U.S. operations said the company sees potential in the market, although efforts to add initial capacity to energy storage projects in India have not yet gained momentum. “We are also monitoring a number of other geographies where the possibility is emerging. So India is somewhere we have been involved for a long time. The market has been in sort of a stop-start mode for a while and so we continue to look and see possibilities there,” he said.

Fluence’s current installed battery energy capacity in India is 270 MWh, largely as part of its hybrid green energy projects.

Even though India has introduced a production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for battery storage and many players, including Reliance Industries, Ola Electric and Rajesh Exports, have entered the battery manufacturing space, no significant progress has been made in the manufacturing space yet; This is mainly due to supply chain constraints and lack of information transfer and mobility from China.

India’s energy storage space is at a nascent stage. As of December 2024, India had installed 4 GWh (gigawatt hours) of independent battery storage capacity. However, the trend of integrating energy storage with solar and wind energy projects is expected to continue and increase capacity. The Central Electricity Authority (CEA) has projected that India will require around 82.37 GWh of energy storage capacity by FY27 and around 411.4 GWh by 2031-32.

The line of storage capacities is growing. During April-October 2025, central nodal agencies and state distribution companies awarded independent BESS projects totaling over 20 GWh. Moreover, the share of 24-hour on (RTC), hard-dispatchable renewable energy (FDRE) and solar plus storage projects remained at a high level of 90% of the total renewable energy capacity tendered in the first eight months of the current fiscal year.

A recent report by Icra stated that the significant decline in battery costs over the last decade has helped reduce energy storage costs and drive the global adoption of BESS projects. Based on current battery costs, the local rating agency estimates that the levelized cost of storage using BESS for 2-4 hours is relatively high. ₹Compared to 4.0-7.0 per unit ₹5 per unit for pumped storage hydroelectric (PSP) projects.

In 2022 the cost was in the range: ₹8-9 per unit. While the costs of BESS for 4-hour storage remain higher than those of PSP, the implementation risks and gestation period of BESS projects are relatively lower, making battery storage more attractive to developers and investors, the report said.