 Good morning, everyone. Good evening to our folks in India. We are very excited today to be kicking off our regional series for the Storage X International Symposium today. Jimmy Chen, I am Jimmy Chen and my co-host will be Simona Anori and we're very excited to be kicking this series off with India. India is a unique case study right now with a huge population and a global transformation every happening with such a large population. So we're very excited to have two speakers from India. Our first speaker will be Rahul Jain. Rahul Jain is the Head of Energy Storage at Renew Power, the largest independent power provider in India, and he will give us the perspective of the region of India. So Rahul, you are on. Thanks Jimmy. Thank you so much. Good evening, good morning, good afternoon to everyone out there. I hope all of you are staying safe and healthy. Let me quickly take you through, as Jimmy has already mentioned, one of the most interesting spaces in the energy storage sector, which is India. So India, I would say it's obviously very close to my heart. I live there, I reside there, I spend my life there, but what all is happening right now in India, the entire transformations, the transition which is happening, it's really heartening to see. So before going there, let me quickly introduce me and my company. So I represent Renew Power, which is India's largest pure play renewable energy independent power producer. We already have a commission, the entire pipeline of almost 10 gigawatt plus spanning across 10 states, 100 plus sites. We have been able to raise the decent amount of capital to continue in fueling our roads. In terms of contribution in India, definitely, I think we have started making some meaningful contributions. We are already contributing a number and a half percent to India's power capacity, which is, I would say, growing at a very fast pace. Around, let's say, in terms of sizes, as I said, 10 states, 100 and plus product sites, almost 1400 plus valuable assets in terms of employees, both at the side and we use corporate services. This is where we are and we have been changing this space for almost now close to three or four years. Tracking this, tracking the entire global space, how is it happening? So that's basically what we were trying to solve for and now, frankly, we have started seeing the fruit of it. So what's happening? What is the unique case which is there? The unique case of India's demand for flexible power. Why am I saying this as a unique case and why stationary energy storage? Frankly, while energy storage in India, both EV sector is growing, stationary storage is also growing, but I'll most likely talk about stationary storage right now through the presentations while I'll also touch upon the EV space also briefly on that. But I thought, let me spend more time on the stationary part because that's where the real transition is happening, the transformation is happening while most of the growth might get fueled through EVs. But the exciting space which is very close to my heart is the stationary space. So I thought, let's tackle that first. So what is so unique about it? When we talk about energy storage, globally, the broader applications which are applicable, the broader use cases which are property dominance are things like ancillary services, right, frequency response systems. There are fast response systems which are required, islanding schemes, right, all of those take a major portion of the revenue streams, up to energy storage, right. But in India, because of the current regulatory environment and the exact need of the earth right now, India actually primarily needs the right solutions for peak demand, let's say something which can cater to the peak requirements, right, and the speed at which we are integrating renewable energy into our grid. We are already at 150 gigawatt plus as on December last year, right. We have a commitment to meet 575 gigawatt this year and 2500 gigawatts by 2030. So right, so the entire enormous amount of renewable energy which is getting into the grids, right, definitely underneath a humongous amount of flexibility in those grids, right. Those flexibilities can be of any type. It can be deepening of merchant markets, deepening of interstate bilateral transactions, right. It could be anything, right. So, but where comes energy storage, right, where comes the requirement of energy storage in India. Off late, India was at the forefront of renewable energy bidding. In fact, it is one of the first few countries to start a competitive bidding for renewable energy, right, and we have already shown the world the true cost or the cost of renewable energy, how it can be brought down while maintaining the right quality standards, right. So we have done plane money, solar, plane money, wind, plane money, hydro till today. But now frankly, most of the distribution utilities as well as system operators are now focusing on what we call it as a profile demo, right, instead of a capacity demo and a profile demo, right. What actually now we are heading towards is renewable energy directly competing with conventional powers with the other forms of energy which the system operator uses, making it dispatchable, making it round the clock, right. So, while RE is no longer preferable, they are all focusing on specific profiles, focusing on their requirements, right. Another important aspect is that obviously, India is a juggernaut of all the transmission networks, all the distribution networks which spans across the country. However, there are very specific pockets where the renewable energy integration is at the highest level, right, especially the western part of India has enormous amount of sunlight, some radiation. So obviously, most of the solar installations are happening towards that area, right. Similarly, the southern part of India is pretty rich. In fact, the coastal part of India is pretty rich on wind speed, wind integration, right. So this is, so basically what I mean to say is that while the transmission network spans across the country, RE installations are happening in pockets, right. And that leads to congestion and ultimately curtailment of RE power. That's where the right amount of flexibility is required. Another important aspect, and frankly, I would say I normally am related to say that while initially when we started on our renewable energy generation, there were humongous amount of problems. Nobody was taking renewable energy seriously. At that point, it was said to be a pilot installations, right, which costed a few dollars per unit at that point of time. And nobody wanted to invest in that. Thankfully, that problem has been taken care of with solar being the cheapest form of energy across all the energies which are present in India, right. But one specific issue or concern which is still there with the existing RE sources is their intermittency, right. The non-dispatchability of specific RE sources, right. They can be a cloud cover, solar stops generating, wind speeds are changing year on year, the patterns are changing. So really, system operators are slightly wide off that how we integrate that, how we schedule it, how we assign the right amount of flexibility in the system, right. So these kind of use cases are fueling the energy storage demand. Now, you go to any distribution unit now in India, you go to any system operator in India, and they're talking about flexibility, having flexibility in the system. And that's where storage kicks in. Frankly speaking, in India, and I'll talk that in detail further down my slides, but storage use cases are being explored and are being deployed at all the three levels of the power sector, whether it is generation level or transmission level or all the distribution level, right. Obviously, the use cases are different, but there are pilots happening, there are projects happening across all the three levels, right. So why, what makes the entire Indian stationary storage industry the right growing industry, so to say, right, the right industry for energy storage. I tried bifurcating the broader requirements into three broader buckets. One obviously is the, and that is the foremost requirement which India actually worked on is to enable the right policies to be there to fuel the entire ecosystem, right. Second obviously would be to develop a robust supply chain. We need to have domestic supply chain to cater to the growing demand, right. And actually, the third one which is exactly the result of it, and it's again a chicken and egg story, which basically the right supply chain creates the right demand and the right demand creates the right ecosystem. And that's where we come, the entire policy framework enables this, right. So what India did or what India is doing on the policy front, let's explore that. Frankly speaking and foremost, India is already on its path to draft a detailed energy storage policy, right. And to that extent that Ministry of Power is openly discussing the draft of this policy with all the stakeholders, all the leading equipment providers, all the technology providers, project developers, financiers, right. So they are taking all their commands, they're taking their responses, and are drafting it. Very recently they conducted a virtual meeting to discuss key highlights. And I just noted them down that these are the likely constructs of the draft energy storage policy, which is happening. And one of the first thing which is very heartening to see is that the vision of the policy is to build a technology agnostic. Then we are not limiting to a particular technology. It has to be technology agnostic, need-based, which is the single biggest or single most important point to make any storage and any energy storage project viable, right. It has to cater to a specific need, right. And one thing which is very core to the entire Indian ecosystem, which is anything which we are deploying, it has to be financially viable, right. We have to find the right business cases. We have to find the right revenue streams to make the entire ecosystem viable and flourishing. Because that's when, unlike, let's say, we could have given various subsidies, various, you can say, exemptions which we have given to Ari for some time. But the storage policy actually devotes more focus on how to make the whole ecosystem financially viable, right. I'll skip through the points. I think I'll only pick up few interesting points. Yes, definitely energy storage, especially when integrated with renewable energy is given a preference. And to fuel that preference, there are certain the costs, the losses, which in any ways, anyone would have been incurred by the transmission network. Those costs are expected to be gave off for charging and discharging, right. So that the storage operator rather can freely charge and discharge any amount of renewable energy which it can, right. Another thing which is very important and that goes towards India's commitment to both renewable energy integration, renewable energy targets and their net zero commitment by 2017, which is the renewable purchase obligations, each distribution utilities, each thermal operator, right, or thermal or large thermal consumers, they are, they already have something which is called as renewable purchase obligation that a percentage of their procurement has to have renewable energy, right. So the quantum of charging which is happening in storage through renewable energy that is also getting counted towards this renewable purchase obligations, right. So storage is being touted as facilitator for renewable energy integration, right. Another thing which is very common and very, very flourishing now in India, which is something called as renewable energy certificates, which also is being made additionally, or which is also supposed to be made additionally to storage systems. So effectively, there would be one renewable energy certificate for any megawatt are generated through a renewable energy source. In addition to that, you will get some extra REC if that renewable energy is stored, right, and energy storage is being used to fuel that. So these are some, these are certain kinds of draft policy framework, which is there. Apart from it, there are a number of transitions, as when I said in the initial part of my presentation that Indian energy sector, electricity sector rather is undergoing a complete transformation, right. So these are certain, obviously, I have not highlighted all of them, but I thought it's worth to discuss actually these four broader buckets, which is one foremost being India is pushing towards growth of merchant markets, right, real, real term transactions, real time exchanges of power, right, just to shorten the time of delivery and utilization, right. The entire arbitrage works there and storage, obviously, you all know that storage works beautifully to capture that arbitrage. There is the famous thing which is called as California duck curve that is already started showing its impact in India as well, with day prices getting subdued and sudden spike in the early evening hours, right. And in some states, it also has morning peak hours as well, right. So some of these arbitrage is storage, a storage project and beautifully captured and not only earn revenue from those that arbitrage, but also helps the grid in stabilizing these anomalies, right. When the demand is not there, they can actually get stored into this energy storage project. So this obviously is helping renewable energy projects to get set up distribution utilities to integrate more and more renewables into their scheme of things, right. Another long due item which was asked for was ancillary services market creation. While this was always there, but a clear regulation, a clear improvised regulation was always asked from the industry. Central Electricity Regulatory Council is responsible for these regulations. So CRC has already issued a draft ancillary services regulation. They have already given that. In fact, the draft has already been now notified. So there is now ancillary services, they are being categorized in terms of primary reserves, secondary reserve and tertiary reserve. So as of now, while primary reserve is not part of the private players, but secondary and tertiary are open for private players operations. Another interesting thing which is ongoing and that also tackles a bit of intermittency part on account of renewable energy is the scheduling and forecasting regulation, right. So there have been drafts already in this space. There are discussions happening on this space. Forum of regulators is also working on this space to provide a specific, a clear guidance on how they will, how a generator has to schedule their power, how to forecast them and obviously the penalties associated with it, right. So because of that, as per one of the initial drafts, it was always mentioned that over injection, any over injection will not get paid, right. Any over injection over the schedule will not get the tariff for it. As against any under injection of power will get a penalty, right. So this is a very strong statement. Obviously, there are bands in which the generator can play, but this enables system operators to better integrate and feel more comfortable while integrating renewable energy space, energy projects in their space, right. So again, storage plays a bigger role here, right, both at the generator end or it can also be at great end, both ways, storage is helping the system operator. Now, another interesting aspect was market-based economic dispatch, which effectively was introduced, although it's a draft right now, but it has been introduced to ensure great flexibility. Obviously, it will also support a greater RE integration simply because now RE is becoming cheaper and cheaper. However, for balancing demand, storage or let's admit too long-term duration storage would reduce or be replaced with requirement of short-term storage support systems, right. So again, this will fuel the overall growth of it. Now going forward, while yes, some of the right policies, at least the direction has been made towards creating a right framework or right environment. Obviously, there has to be some specific engagements, specific focus on creating the right supply chain, right. This is one area where India has recently started focusing on creating the right manufacturing system for whatever they are doing, being slightly self-defined on that. It also helps in making the entire solution more economical, right. So because of that, India has already announced, I think this was a global news and India has done that for various sectors where they wanted to lay more focus on. And one of the core sectors was advanced chemistry sales, which India wanted to manufacture here in India. And there was a production link incentive scheme which was introduced to fuel that. This was a scheme for a size of almost 50 gigawatt hour, right. So from where we stand right now, this is a humongous amount of supply, which is being created and by forecasting the right amount of demand, right. So the broader construct of this bed was the minimum, you can go up to 5 gigawatt hour, maximum, you can go up to 20 gigawatt hour. So just to ensure that there are a number of players present there, we are not laying all the eggs in one basket, we are diversifying it. And one of the core focus area of this scheme was that how much integration, domestic integration you can do within the next five years. Immediately after the signing of your contract, within five years, you will have to ensure that minimum 60% of the value addition happens here in India, right. So hypothetically, let's say if you are manufacturing cells, then you will have to do raw material processing here, right. Some bit of mining, whatever is possible, that should start happening in India, so that the entire ecosystem can be created. Very interestingly, the incentive was linked to two broader parameters apart from domestication, the two broader parameters were the cycle life and energy density, right. So the higher the energy density, the more incentive you get, or higher cycle life, you can guarantee the more incentive you get. So it was a matrix where incentives were mentioned. And because of all the enabling provisions, all the focus which has been shown by the comment, the bit actually got oversubscribed almost two and a half times, more than two and a half times. So for 50 gigawatt total bits, capacity was 130 gigawatt were received, right. So the evaluations are complete on this happened in January 2022, this year. Hopefully, this bit is likely to conclude in the next couple of months. And then the entire capacity is the time period to kickstart the manufacturing process will start. All the bidders are expected to commission their project by late 2024. And by 2027, they will have to achieve the minimum 60% domestic value addition component, which has been stated in the bid. For that, the Government of India has already given a budget free allocation of around 18,000 crores. And this has actually been increased now with the recent budget allocation. So this was one of the biggest, you can say supply drivers, which has been created. What it did for the supply chain was that existingly, if you go by the supply chain here, so basis, let's say mining of raw material, raw material refining, manufacturing and pack assembly, if I broadly break the entire value chain into these four buckets, pack assembly is already happening in India. There are various players, although this is happening in slightly unorganized way right now. But with the PLI scheme kicking in, this will start getting more and more organized going forward. But knowing fully well that yes, pack assembly is already happening and most people are willing to do this in any case. PLI scheme actually has been started from selling manufacturing and onwards and backwards rather, right? So pack assembly was left out because Government of India believed that yes pack assembly is a business outcome of all of those things that will come on its own. So with the recent oversubscription and the kind of interest which has been shown by various EV manufacturers, various renewable players, various transmission operators, this is something which is likely to kick off in a bit way and almost I will not be surprised if in the next five years they are sitting on a capacity of more than 100 gigawatt. Another thing which is happening, although this is happening in very niche areas right now, is the entire raw material refining space. This is already happening but has to happen in a much deeper and a focused way right now. And I think with the PLI scheme pushing it, this will happen pretty soon. On the mining part, unfortunately, most of the raw materials which are currently being used in currently prevalent chemistries, especially on the battery chemistry part, these are not, let's say India doesn't enjoy a big result here, right? So Government of India has already started doing strategic tie ups, strategic alliances. I think very recently, I think few weeks back, they have already signed an MOU with Australia for securing some of these critical material. Apart from it, India is also working on various new chemistries, new storage technologies where India always have, let's say, decent raw material space like sodium sulphur, like sodium ion. These are certain things which are already working. So if I bifurcate these broader technologies into short, emission medium, long duration, I think India is working on all of these technologies whether it is flywheels or ultra capacitors, they are already in abundance in India right now. Being used in various EV applications, various, in fact, wind turbines also use ultra capacitors. For medium durations also, lithium ion batteries obviously are at the forefront right now. They are primarily because ultimately, this is the biggest space of growth right now in India. And that's where most of the initial applications which I talked about addresses this part of the medium duration part. So interestingly, flow batteries are also taking or trying to catch a significant pipe on this part of the gate. There are various indigenous battery manufacturers who are demonstrating their products demonstrating their technologies and a lot of investment is getting rooted towards that. On the long duration aspect also, India is very actively working on hydrogen. Fuel cells and hydrogen, they have already announced their first front of hydrogen policy also. This is, I think, likely to be a primary driver for the long duration space. Also, in addition that pump storage, there are existing pump storage projects which are there in India, which is driving primarily being utilized by system operators and they are also likely to survey some of the specific use cases which are required. So in a nutshell, I can say that yes, supply definitely is getting created. Government of India has taken a right step in this aspect to promote various technologies. In fact, R&D also is being promoted. The Department of Science and Technology, they have been announcing various grants, various allocations for specific advance or high-advanced chemistries to develop and take those grants for that. In fact, there is a three-way partnership which is being promoted, which is basically the Department of Science and Technology, the academia and the industry. All three coming together and promoting the R&D space. So supply, I would say, is more or less on track. Hopefully, we would see a much wider ecosystem on this space in the next five years. But what is happening on the demand front? Let's try and focus on that. What is happening on the demand front? So I thought that let's try and bifurcate the overall demand requirement into these broader time spans, time scales, 0 to 1 year, which is now, let's say, imminent urgent right now. So both states as well as central authority are working towards it. They are bringing out various application-based tenders, Solar Energy Corporation of India, which is a direct offshoot of ministry of new and renewable energy. They are at this forefront. They have already brought out a bigger transmission link tender, which is almost a gigawatt hour of capacity, NDPC, which is again a large behemoth both in conventional as well as renewable space. They have also issued a three gigawatt hour tender. So these are multi gigawatt hour tenders, which have already been now getting announced and getting deployed, but serving different purposes. So this is the good work which is happening in all the authorities are working in conjunction with each other, while Solar Energy Corporation of India's project is primarily transmission linked, NDPC's project is more or less generation linked or let's say the profile forming storage tender. Apart from it, there are already a couple of multi megawatt hour storage tenders, which have already been announced. Some of them we ourselves are developing, providing round-the-clock power, renewable power to the discoms, or let's say serving specific peak requirements, peak power requirements to the distribution. So all of those things are already happening in India now, but what is happening next? What is in line with in one, two, three years space? So very interestingly, there are various strategic projects which have already been announced by the government of India. These are projects in very strategic locations like Leh, way up north of India. Leh has been a union predatory now very recently. And now the entire barren land is being developed into a humongous renewable energy part and to transmit that part into the mainland India or the central part of India. Government of India is laying out a big HVDC line, hybrid HDC line to take it here in central India. This line will also be attached with a humongous or let's say a big storage project, which will ensure that while the intermittency part of renewable power is already taken care of by that storage, but also this will provide the right amount of flexibility to the system operator to maintain the grid as well as this will also help in augmenting or inflating the utilization of the transmission network. Similar things are happening in western part of India. There are states like Gujarat and Karnataka who are already working on storage linked projects. Both has separate requirements while Karnataka is primarily working on distribution linked storage projects. Gujarat on the other hand is working on generation linked storage project, a centralized storage project. So all of these things are happening in parallel and specifically as I talked just now that there are various policy factors which are fueling this amount of growth in the mid term I would say, mid to long term 3 to 5 years kind of a time frame. Ancillary services, open access direct consumer sale, flexible solutions right when you are selling round the clock power directly to the consumer. All of these flexible solutions will start fueling the entire growth of energy storage projects in India. Now till date till now I have broadly talked about stationary storage projects in India even in electric vehicle space. That is also why primarily till date it was primarily driven by two wheelers and three wheelers which are which were getting electrified and I think India has made good advances in that space at least in the three wheeler space that is getting you can say readily acceptable to the users and is getting very very popular here. Apart from it four wheelers and commercial vehicles are also picking up on this space. In fact some of the participants in the manufacturing PLI scheme they are actually EV manufacturers either four wheelers or commercial vehicles manufacturers who are planning to deploy electric fleet in various parts of India. Through most of the government departments have already started using electric vehicles so they are creating their internal demand for that with same one and came to famous faster adoption of manufacturing of electric vehicles. These were specific policies to drive the adoption of electric vehicles in India providing specific incentives, providing specific assurances and guarantees to these vehicles. This has already started showing the right fruits. There are a number of two wheeler manufacturers now who are actively working on improving their offerings, improving their analytics space on electric vehicles. This actually is getting adopted by the four wheeler manufacturers also now while the penetration is very low as of now as we speak but all the forecasts whatever be the agency that is quite hard to see. One of the forecast I have already mentioned here almost 25% EV market share of the total storage market by 2025. That is the kind of growth that we are expected to see. Nithya which is the think tank government think tank in India they have already laid out very clear pathways very clear framework which can fuel this entire growth and very recently in our union budget which has been presented in February a few weeks back. Government of India has already announced the battery swapping points. So again going by the ownership and let's say delinking the battery vis-a-vis automobile manufacturing, delinking those and generating a specific demand for battery swapping, battery manufacturing to that space. So that policy is also quite hard to make this email. So in a nutshell frankly this is my last slide and I want to broadly summarize in these broader four buckets. Edequate demand enablers are there now. EV transition adoption of EVs is increasingly becoming popular. It is getting more acceptable now in the general mass of India especially because of two wheelers and three wheelers. The adoption has already started keeping in and now with even the charger policy also government of India is ensuring that not only we have city charging or home charging but we also would have a decent network of highway chargers which actually will start negating the general concerns of the range in adequacy and general belief that okay I would need some backup in case of an electrically powered vehicle. All of those are getting negated on the EV space and on the stationary storage I have talked at length now. Those obviously the entire policy demand and I think generally even without considering the policies generally the amount of RE which is getting integrated this already has started fueling the demand. On the supply side some of the things yes definitely there are custom beauties and taxes currently which are applicable and government of India are actively considering to remove them or at least for some time to fuel the entire growth. Let's see how it happens. It can at least sustain till the time a robust manufacturing supply chain can happen so that broader demand issues which all the supply side guys would have that can be negated for right and for that we definitely have a good regulatory support. I would say fortunately a thinking government machinery which are actively taking inputs from industries actively engaging in various forums, various platforms and all of these frankly I would say this actually is driving developers like us investors there are EV manufacturers there are investors in stationary storage also to develop more and more innovative business models more and more value streams for these storage projects and to make this overall solution viable economically viable. I think I'll stop there I have talked at length maybe I'll stop sharing and let's open it up for any questions if you have. Rahul thank you so much for excuse me for your fantastic presentation in depth and comprehensive it was great to hear about all that activity. Boy it's got it's a dynamic place right now with all those things going on. So let me also welcome Simona are you on too? Yeah I'm on good morning everybody thank you Rahul for your presentation. My pleasure thank you. So let me start as the as the host with a very interesting question. So right now when you're incorporating storage are the storages what are the lithium ion batteries what is the material of these batteries that you're incorporating in your storage? So frankly speaking as I was saying we are working on this for almost now three and a half years now and frankly speaking at this stage we are testing and developing almost all kind of storage projects for all products which we can we have been testing flow batteries we have been testing medium ion batteries in fact within lithium ion also we are testing NMCs and LFP batteries right simply because see ultimately all of those storage products are being used and utilized in various environmental conditions right and India has a unique environmental condition which is slightly different from the other parts of the globe. So we have been testing out these technologies how they behave in Indian environment conditions and are developing the right business models for all. So frankly speaking as a developer we have been technology agnostic and are trying to accommodate or rather trying to explore all kinds of storage technologies. And are most of these batteries imported or are they actually domestically produced? As of now most of them are imported right now because ultimately as I said the ecosystem is getting developed now it will take at least two to three years now to bring us to that stage that we will have a complete domestic ecosystem. So till then yes unfortunately it is all imported that's right. Samona? Yeah we have a question from the audience and they ask you to talk more about the state of domestic mining of raw materials or generally how they are secure you guys are securing raw materials. Sure. Can you comment on that? Thank you. Right right sure thanks. So yeah so that is one area which is of I would say at the highest priority even for government and also for us because unfortunately as I said India doesn't have a enormous amount of some of these resources which are required right, Nickel, Ethereum. Unfortunately India doesn't have those reserves in place right now. So what is happening and as I mentioned in my presentation Government of India has been actively working on creating right strategic tie-ups with on a government to ground government level now. Some of these tie-ups very recently I think to be expected they have been signed an MOU with Australian government especially for western Australian reserves. So they are trying to get those reserves and try and refine those materials here in India. So this is I would say in already in development now some of these agreements have already been signed and some are under discussions with some of the some of the government. So hopefully we should start getting good fruits. Thank you. Thank you. Back to you Jimmy. I was just going to say it's wonderful to see India taking on all these challenges at once. It's an amazing undertaking and amazing to see the thought and the structure that's going into this. But perhaps we should move on to our next presentation given the time. Simone, I'll turn it over to you for the introduction. Yeah, thank you. It's a great pleasure to me to introduce Professor Sagar Mitra who is currently an associate professor in energy science and engineering department at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. Let me just briefly give you a few highlights of Professor Mitra. He received his PhD in solid state electrochemistry from Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore and after completing his PhD in 24 he joined the research group of Professor Taras Khan in France and then after that he followed the three-year period in in electronic industry in Sweden where he also was awarded the prestigious Swedish award on expert in electrochemistry for for the electronic industry. So he's currently leading the battery research team at the National Center for Solar Photovoltaic Research and Education at IIT Bombay which is funded directly by the ministry of new renewable energy. We look forward to hearing from you Professor Mitra on technologies and R&D in India. The floor is yours. Thank you Sivana. Good morning and good evening. Okay, so today I'll be talking about electrochemical energy storage technologies in India what we are doing and also I'll be mainly talking about our research at IIT Bombay. So I am from Department of Energy Science and Engineering myself, Sagar Mitra and nice to be here and connecting with a greater audience, larger audience by this forum. So if you look at the energy storage, let's say electrochemical engineering and this history in India is very it's very old because we are building this electrochemical engineering for a long time and a lot of good scientists already produced and if I look at the research, main research is going on before some of the research is going on in a large even few decades earlier. So this is the three institute I feel is a major contributor in energy storage currently in national labs which is a Central Electrochemical Research Institute just name is CRERI and then becomes our space research institute and another one is ARCI so Advanced Research Center for Powered Metallurgy. So this is the first one which already produced a lot of electrochemical engineers and I think if you look at in United States major contributions of engineering who are coming from India they are from this institute and if you look at for all history of battery storage the nickel cadmium battery which is used in space research in our even space missile research and satellites. Here this Vikram Sarawai was combined with another institute in India Institute of Science they researched in 1970 and that battery still we are using so that's a technology development started from long back. Also this institute which is ARCI and this ARCI also work on powder metallurgy and they are well known for the power of the power productions and large batch productions. So this is the main three institutes I feel they are contributing in energy storage for a few decades now and come to the other system other institutes where even if you look at it this is the all red colors this is the one which I am working right now in Mumbai and this is the India map and this is all red color where the major R and D activities are going on right now in the battery storage maybe let's say 10 years or 15 years like timeline we are working and few other also added but if you look at most of the Indian universities or Indian institutes right now working on storage million the materials and that is the general tendency everywhere but sale or battery is not only the materials you need to see how good you can pack that materials and make a device so there is a lot of gap in between the material research and or maybe the lab scale research bring it to the real R and D or D type of developments and then use it for in the field trials so this is the things what I feel is a researcher I feel there is a lot of gap right now is happening but apart from few institutes who are working on the prototyping apart from the battery research material research or electrochemical research few institutes are already working on the prototyping we are one of them in a research institutes or technological institutes we are also working towards the prototyping right now so one thing what we see here is as a faculty in IIT Bombay for last 13 years so this lab scale research translate to the let's say pre-pilot scale research you need to have a like a group type of research is required it's not only the one group can work and then get it done you need to have a collaborative effort by the children institutes and bring it there so that is I think is missing right now and maybe by time very soon we'll be having that type of research so if you look at what is requirement I think Rahul was talking very nicely what are the requirements for next five to ten years timeline and the numbers are very high so if you look at the even renewable panninga levels renewable itself is looking for a very high number of regardless of installations for battery storage also it is around 120 to 150 gigahertz or a battery storage only for you for who will learn these the predictions are going is happening by 2050 and as Rahul was talking about a lot of scheme was going on and from the government sides and the all schemes are for the making the sales because we are right now we are not making incents or any type of battery apart from the latest battery none of the batteries are made in India at least in lithium and battery sense and sodium and battery so in this sense government is looking for some kind of project they are looking for a bigger project bigger deployment projects where it will be the sale will be manufactured in India and this is the observations when I look at the researcher some of the chemistry is what we are right now banging on which may not be correct for the Indian conditions because our climatic climatic like a climate things are completely different climatic conditions and if you look at the average temperature if India is around 50 to one degree centigrade and and goes up even 43 and goes down even zero sub zero some other places so this is actually brings a lot of challenges for some chemistry and and what the business place is going on right now there's a lot of schemes are out so all are looking for some transport like export of technology to India and making the sales because once this need to have this much high number of capacity need to be produced so obviously people look at the technology which is already proven by outsides and that's a that's a good way to think about it so obviously that technology will be imported and then use it directly here so things is a problematic right now what I feel you can bring the technology but that much manpower so huge manpower train manpower even steel manpower is required and I don't think India can give within another five to seven years that big number of steel manpower for this type of very advanced level productions in it so that's another problem apart from the raw raw materials what we are talking about so as for my my opinion this missing point what we are missing right now apart from what we are whatever we are discussed so as a researcher what do you feel a few governments if I look at outside outside what are the program government program already they are in the worldwide so rpi battery battery 500 even japan having elka spring japan and arena astrea these are huge amount of funding which is given for from the government itself to extrapolate if they are technological development also the development not only are the developments also we don't have the consortium project right now we don't have the project like jc here which is very well known in the usa carad in uk found over germany we don't have this type of this type of pan pan angel level research center which actually works all the scientists together and then what so this is a huge missing point what I feel and they need to be look at it how fast you can close this this gap otherwise maybe we'll be ending up with only exporting technologies exporting manpower exploding everything for whatever the demand the local demand is and that is maybe another things we need to look at apart from research okay so let's because that is the point I was thinking as a researcher I should put it here okay so I'll talk about from my perspective right now what we are doing in as a lab so battery research I like separated in two points one is a metal ion batteries other one is metal batteries so I work on both sides on my myself working only on the batteries no other things so in the metal ion batteries so we work on lithium and battery because this is the one I have trained and I work from the beginning of my career so lithium and battery I'll be working in full of my life and then also you work on sodium and battery and calcium and magnesium and battery is a small the metal batteries we are working for long time for lithium sulfur and sodium sulfur today I'll be talking about some of the sulfur research what we do also we started solid state batteries and liquid lithium metal battery so this is the major things we work in our lab in it bomb and several other colleagues are also there they are also working on modeling side people are working on thermal modeling side some people are working electrochemical modeling several people are there in our institute right now you can look at all department having battery someone in one at least one will get top server they are working on that so this is a very interesting ID Tech was published that they have asked questions the what is the top startups technology area in the current the current time and the area wise if you look at it the 42 is near about 40 percent of people talk about the anode is the main area startup is coming up and solid state is the next one and then lithium ion cathode is and the design so this is another another area is is in the technological startup is coming up in the world and then is lithium sulfur this is the current train and I believe the startup startup ideas which is actually is the is the indication what type of technology transitions going on so this is I believe in that so I'll be and in our lab also you are on anode design so that I can I'll show you one of my startup is on the anode design special anode design where we achieve some kind of dendrite free batteries and lithium ion with liquid itself in the liquid sense and lithium sulfur and some if the time permits I'll talk about from the cathode work I'm not going to work on the new type of or new cathodes I'll be working on the I'll be showing some of the cathode which is already known by the everyone but we are trying to advancing by the surface modification so that we can see the whatever achievement we can get out of okay so let's start with the sulfur back so this is one of the best paper I found that to start with the chemistry because this is a very complicated chemistry let me try to show it to the very light it is a very simple way to understand what is this sulfur chemistry is all about because we are all interested on sulfur because sulfur is one of the sulfur cathode if it is successful sulfur cathode will be one of the most economic battery in the world because sulfur doesn't contain in cobalt doesn't contain nickel sulfur is easily available a lot of things are there so sulfur is one of the things people think that may be a game changer and when you start looking at when you make a battery like a sulfur as a cathode and lithium or sodium as an anode what are the things we expect so if you look at the electronic configuration sulfur is just easy to let's say reduce because in adding up to electronic forms to sulfur two minus so when you make a sulfur cathode in this sulfur is embedded on carbon that's a carbon that's a way everyone start looking at it sulfur in embedded carbon and the sulfur is solid you know the sulfur is in the solid form in native form and when this you need to start reacting means the start if you want to have electrical reaction the first thing you need to discharge means you need to reduce the sulfur so that's how you're adding the electrons so the first reaction should be the solid sulfur then goes to the sulfur two minus but solid sulfur so when you start making the same in front in presence of liquid liquid it goes to the sulfur solid to first is going to dissolve and then form a solid liquid sulfur this is the this is the dissolution process happens and as for my opinion this is the one I think is the bad process for the sulfur atoms it is a we don't know when the it is it's going to start the reactions because it needs takes time long time to dissolute the sulfur sulfur and the solid to liquid and once it is formed a liquid then it start in participating the reduction reactions and every reductions we are forming like adding two and two electrons two electrons and then forming different polysulfide like a s8 then s6 s4 s6 s4 s2 and the end product is the and then every step we are adding on electrons the several problems it is well known that our the problem the polysulfide is dissoluting in the electrolyte and we are losing the electrolyte electrode as well as the polysulfide is not and the capacity not so many things so this is known so as per my sense of the sulfur pattern the main problem is the sulfur dissolution the first problem and if you look at the dissolution problem to start the reaction you need to have a dissolution of the sulfur and we need to see what the electrolyte could be look at sulfur is insoluble in water so water water based battery cannot be possible here and sparingly sparingly soluble in alcohol and ether so we are right now using ether ether the solvent and which is sparingly soluble in ether and completely soluble in carbon disulfide and i think that is not the good solvent to work for the batteries but that's the only solvent which is actually solubilize the sulfur the main so let's say we start the reactions with the ether right now we are using the ether so sulfur is good it is slightly soluble in ether and then getting the liquid sulfur and that's why we start reactions and the main strategy most of the researcher does if you can reduce the sulfur quantity very minimum and increase the obviously that will increase the volume of electrolyte and then you are not actually struggling because of dissolution because small amount it may dissolve in a larger electrolyte that's why people are the researcher actually working on these reactions with a very minimum of sulfur loading and the large quantity of electrolyte is everything is good for your uh electrical performance and publish a paper but when you go for a device level so we cannot increase the we cannot increase the volume of electrolyte because that will decrease your energy density we need to have a sulfur uh uh sulfur loading as much as possible at least 78 percent of sulfur is required to get a desired like an energy density there's a main problem right now okay so uh another thing is uh people all talk about because most of us even we also talk about in this reaction which is a discharge reactions and discharge profile and whatever explanations we have everything is based on discharge people are not talking about the charge profile and what is happening this is well known okay discharge is following this we are charge also following the same but if you look at carefully the profile at least voltage profile will give you the idea it is not following the same but people are not talking about it so that is one other if you are a researcher if you're listening to me I think you look at the charge profile also and see what are the problem can be and what are the mechanisms what are the pathways people are following and which is true or not that we need to look at okay so I'll talk about the same whatever you talked about and several polysulfide formations was shown and if you look at in the the capacity specific capacity wise for different different space formations I'll show you the in the schematic and what are the problem I was talking it will be in the schematic right now so we start with s8 which is just start with discharge and then we started adding sodium or lithium it will be same and the number will be a little bit different it will be first so two sodium if you add and then the capacity will be 209 and the first is opening of the chain and then going to the straight chain and then forming different different polysulfide I already said s8, s6, s4, s2 will be forming so if you see stop it here if you stop it here so you'll see if you stop it here like s4 Na2 s4 Li2 s4 like a 4 up to s4 polysulfide and this this zone is highly reversible if you actually target your if you want to improve the efficiency of the cell lithium sulfur or sodium sulfur you can restrict your sulfur s4 but that is not possible it is not very I have seen some few papers were restricted to the sulfur to the s4 and then shown very high reversible characteristics but I am not sure how good that is can be explained in the when you have a dynamic situations okay so this this is one zone where it is highly reversible but when you want to extract more and more like if you add more on lithium and sodium so it is going to because most of the people are interested to have more than let's say 1000 like a 1675 is the theoretical capacity if we exchange all the sodium along with it so it goes to the phase transitions and here this the last phase where it is solid and that that's and before that all are all are these are polysulfides which is actually soluble in the electrolyte and all of us we are actually working on the reducing the completely and then bringing back and a few a few transitions are not very fissile that I already market sluggish and several work is going on in these directions to improve the polysulfide dilutions to improve the sluggishness and several strategies like people go with the interlayer formations people go with the cathode modifications people go with the additives special special special everything everybody is talking about several way so here I will show you one of the new things what we observed during the studies we also took a like a pristine carbon plot and then very specialized way we can we have corroded this surface this is a the way each corrosion we have done and then very controlled we made it and made it very highly porous you can see the the the holes are created very high so here we made this this current collector as a host for polysulfide that's was that's was our interest and when you look at the cyclic performance what we see that it is observed that it is the same way people observe at the like the first the first transitions happen like a higher polysulfide lower polysulfide then goes to the transition to the the solid phase formations but here what you observed in the one middle plateau was observed and we are interested because this was not very common when you observe this this that middle plateau was not very much common that time at least we have not seen much report on that and people have some of the people shown that but not not explained properly and here also you have seen and a 1.85 that middle plateau is coming and try to understand what is this middle plateau about so what we came up I'll talk about in the next slide so this plateau is very interesting and that actually increase the open circuit potentials for the cell and we are going behind this what is this actually coming from okay the even cycle performance very good even the loading of 6.8 loading we have these results was not 6.8 but we have gone up to 6.8 gram per centimeter square loading and milligram per centimeter square loading it is it is doing very good and first sodium impact okay so what we have observed here that there's a few things we have observed and we have given as a name as like a free radical coupling reactions so what is happening here so once this sodium is like a sodium sulphur is solid is dissolved in the liquid and then during discharge of two electron added it is forms is two is six two minus it is already people have proven that when you start discharge or charge reactions so the di anions and the mono anions are produced in the section there's a lot of papers are there it is already shown that di anions and mono anions are produced and what we we are proposed in this this paper at least that this S62 minus is going for a disproportionate reactions because we are using highly a proteic solvent and with a high donation number donate number and that is facilitating this S62 minus going to S3 mono anion the mono radicals so that formations we we think that this is a entropy driven process and it is forming and there's a two fast scale is forming and what you're proposing this is not we are identifying this S3 mono anion is producing also due to this our highly corrosive surface was produced where the dangling bond was produced which is act as a again free radical so here what we are proposing once it is formed immediately it is actually coupling with the the radical from the carbon this carbon carbon host and that is actually restricting your sulphur polysulphur dissolution further also catalyzing the reaction because we are not alloying further polysulphur like S6 go to the lower immediate it goes from here to the like a sodium sodium mono disulphur so this is the observation we have found and then we will show you by different different experimentation what we are showing what we are saying it is it is actually shown in the experimentation so we have done because this is the radical formations you need to see in the in situ format we are looking at what experiment you can do and we are available in our our lab and we see okay so raman is one of the sensitive experiment can be probed by the sulphur can be proved by the raman so we design a coin cell where the one side which is the cathode side so this is sulphur side which is have a hole and then we have used a additive transparent additive to make it not react with the air so this experiment was done in a in situ mode and then what we have observed very interesting point we have observed what you are talking about same thing you observe in this in situ experimentation so you see that there is a few observations so you can see here you started from a ocb and then started discharging it like you are using it and at 1.5 you can see one new peak is is coming which is actually written here it is a 518 518 centimeter inverse which is we say it is a s3 mono radical formations and another one you can see the other two peaks another two peaks are coming which is a 418 and 377 which is a again confirming that s3 mono radical is forming and the same time the lower poly polysulphur is actually forming that is confirmed from the in situ experimentations and this is one of the experiments we have done and then shown that is okay whatever you are talking it is actually is happening in our system the same thing we have explained here also same as what I was talking about okay so we not only stop there we also work on the electron like a esr which is esr will give you that it's actually the radical formation is happening or not so we have done and see that that when you work on the pristine carbon that is a carbon cloud that is more theoretical because we have not created any dangling bond so when you have activated partially activated we started seeing that the signal is coming that shows that free radical is formed when you have a strongly activated you can see the strong signal of free radical which is coming from carbon dangling bond and the same time when you look at the electrolyte system which is actually giving you the s3 monovalent and on and see that there is also a peak is there and this spectra is not very good because of the carbon fiber it has carbon fiber top of that this electrolyte cathode was there that's the reason that's not very strong signal we observe and that and what we are saying here so this this radical and when it is formed here s3 is actually coupling and then making a polysulfide absorb on the surface and also catalyzing the reactions because we see that the sluggishness of the reaction is not there also we have same thing we have proven by the XPS in the dry state and see that whatever the formation of CS bond what we are talking about this is it is already there you can see this is already a CS bond is formed so that is again proving one of the proof we can give that what we are talking this is in the right directions okay so that this is we observe then we are looking at other things which we will already have published on the magnesium sulfur we have seen the same thing is also happening in magnesium sulfur so in this case the magnesium sulfur batteries what we have extra thing we have done in the top of the carbon fiber we have used the polyaniline as a electronic conductor we thought of the electronic conductor is required from our previous report but here when you start looking at the this free radical mechanism there once you observe their sodium sulphur we thought maybe look at it the other work where we have observed this it is correct or not and it is validating for other sulfur reactions or not so here also you see the same thing so same explorations is going here also but extra things what we have done we have done some lifetime experiment to see that the lifetime in of the free radical is matching or not so what we have seen here the polyaniline when you do a single only polyaniline it shows the three type of times like a 50 percent shows 0.59 nanosecond timescale and 38 around 40 percent shows to two nanoseconds and very small amount are 5.2 nanoseconds and when you do the same experiment lifetime experiment for photo luminescence what we see that magnesium sulfide because this is a catholide is actually shows a smaller timescale so like 1.3 and that shows there is a possibility this that polyaniline free radicals which is can be combined with the polysulfide from the magnesium sulphur so the similar type of what we observe similar type of explanations we have given but when you do a polyaniline together with magnesium sulphide then you see the distribution that the lifetime is increasing is that the red plot the distribution is little bit spread it out so we need to do more control experiment here we supposed to do in the in situ we have not done because our limitation of the experimentations so in the very in the future maybe we'll be near future we'll be doing that but there is some kind of environmental effect also coming and the interactions we see that there is interactions which is happening due to the polyaniline so here we are saying that polyaniline is giving a catalytic effect by combining the free radicals which is coming from polyaniline and combining from from the sulphides okay so so next is if you want to use any metal electrodes in a sulphur batteries we need to protect this metal electrode that's a very common practice all the time so here we need to see the how we can protect the i well we can protect the lithium ions so if you look at the lithium ion very old literature of the lithium metal electrochemistry so two type of ACI was suggested by this I think I've given this references where you can see if you are the ACI or surface flame is a electronic insulator and there is a two things can happen or it is an electronic conductor so two cases can be happened if it is electronic conductor so it has shown it is the uniformity of the further deposition from the electrolyte decomposition is very uniform and it is seized after some time and if your electronic your surface flame is insulator type or is a mixed insulator so there is a deposition of lithium is what is called the very uniform sorry very uniform deposition could be looked at it and there is there is a and further will not see and then there will be growth on the lithium lithium metal so that shows that if you have a your surface flame is insulating type you will have the probability to form a dendrites so based on that you start looking at the carbon or lithium literature and then see the what type of ACI compositions are so most of them you can see it is a conductive type and some of them are like a semiconductor type so if you look at it one of the compositions is is like a if you look at some of the compositions of your surface flame can be conductive so then maybe we have we can prevent your dendrite formation the similar type we worked on this is lithium nitrate and nitrate formations there is a civil research paper there on lithium nitrate deposition on lithium metal and preventing it so here what you have done something different which is a very simple way we made this we saturated the nitrogen gas in a liquid electrolyte and then give the our lithium metal and very control we formed this lithium nitride deposition on the lithium metal and a very thin film and we have done AFM and see the roughness created on the lithium self nitride and it has shown that very thin and not very rough surface was created so that's actually this was created and then you can see the ACM also images shown that very uniform lithium nitrate deposition happens and lithium nitrate is well known as a conductive lithium conduction there and that we feel that that may be preventing the lithium dendrites obviously we've seen that up to 45 minutes of etching when you do the etching on the experience we see the whatever layer we have formed is around 500 to 540 nanometer of thickness of lithium nitrate layer was formed on the lithium and that is a very optimum thickness we have observed by several trials and that will actually standardize our process and we studied some of the df2 study you see the how the growth is you can see the two site was identified one a1 and a2 one will give you horizontal growth other only give you vertical growth and when you calculate that see which growth is a preferential we see the very minimum difference in the energy and we see that maybe the both way it has formed and then it created the three dimensional film on this lithium surface is very minimum energy differences and when you do is symmetrical studies to see the film is surface film is actually working for us and the black color what you see in the plot which is only beer lithium which is not modified with the modified one there is no deterioration on the there's a and the in the passivation flame is actually working for large current even lower one if you see the large current to the even lower current both are working fine so then we started using that lithium metals foil which is covered by the lithium nitrate against the sulfur and we see that there is a several difference on the polarization obviously it is shown is very minimum polarization cycle life also improved and here if you see if you are not even modified it then you can see the the disturbance and then same is actually feeling it is we have done several other things but the time we may not discuss but the main problem is the dissolution the sulfur because we already talked about sulfur dissolution is a problem but when you make a cell and in electrolyte it is slowly dissolving so the if you are not even doing any charging or discharging it are keeping at a full charge state it is starts slowing this is also chemical reactions and the sulfur dissolution and look at it up to the 30 days 60 days time and see which one is giving better so we have seen that our coated lithium metal is giving better surface surface protections and then it is not cell discharge is very restricted right and the value is also very good if you look at it around 90 to 100 ohms after 30 days is observed and the internal resistance on the lithium side which is good for the cell okay so another activity I was going to talk about which is a let's say lithium cobalt oxide which is well known lithium cobalt oxide well known for the lithium chemistry because we are using for all those transome electronics and the demand is keep on increasing the main problem of the lithium cobalt oxide is cannot utilize the full capacity so we tried several right now several papers are out on lithium cobalt oxide from our group so I'll show you maybe one or two things why I'm interested because I like this chemistry this very interesting chemistry if anyone is interested to learn electrochemistry unless lithium and battery they should work with the lithium cobalt and graphite the very standard chemistry you'll understand so many things so there's a low high volumetric energy density so that's the reason we we have done some coating work but here I'll show you just to modify the electrolyte so what we have done here we used a conventional electrolyte and ionic liquid as a hybrid mode at least 39% of ionic liquid as used and that's an optimum concentration I've seen and then seen that it's actually creating a very good surface film and is enhancing the cycle life of nco also you can extend your potential up to the 3 or 4.4 and we look at it two different ionic liquid your TFSI two anions anion effect also looked at it TFSI and PSI so we have seen the TFSI is better for some applications at one thing we also interested to know here so which is the if I use or modify any electrolyte what type of what type of portion behavior you'll see in the cathode side in the current collector so these are studied and see that our hybrid electrolyte is not is precipitating very nicely with the even the first cycle itself and then protecting part that that's a that's a good thing for if you're using a hybrid electrolyte compared to the conventional electrolyte and that passives and that actually saves your battery so this is one of the propositions uh is we have worked on and we have gone through uh by several experimentations my mic this is microscope uh the optical microscope experiment we have seen which which type of anion having better effect I was already saying that a TFSI having a better smooth inter-passivating layer compared to a fsi and you have seen uh very detailed XPS analysis and shown that it is what type of component is actually we found that aluminum heads of the PF3 is actually responsible for very smooth passivation layer okay so another we recently submitted this also with LMO we LMO is having several problems the dissolution problem cracking problem so what we have done we have the special coating as used which actually the coating materials and the LMO uh actually uh here two of the lattice parameters are actually matching so that way we use the coating of uh NMC uh top of the LMO and its behavior is fantastic so this paper is as we are submitted this and we observe even 500 cycles this there is no cracking dissolution is very minimal and we have made even power sales uh study so this is still under work right now okay so apart from the research so several things we are doing we are also doing prototyping so we have a lab of prototyping where we are working some of the sodium and batteries prototyping lithium and batteries prototyping I'm not interested on the uh like a same commercial chemistry just for learning we have done but now we are working on the new technology development so all these sales we are made it is in our facility this is recently made one ampere of lithium sulfur pouch and this facility it was utilized to develop a new technology I'll show you one new technology what we are talking about here okay so this is one of the new technology you are talking about so we made uh are you already said that we have uh designed a new anode which is a dendrite free I'll show you uh this sale this sale was charged for you see at 200 cycles and kept it a charge conditions to make sure there is if any dendrite forms it will be there and then in a liquid state this battery is liquid and then we started uh started slicing it and this type of demo you can see in solid state battery but it's a liquid state also there is no fire so this is a full charge conditions and we are slicing the batteries uh and that shows that there is no dendrite so this student of mine who has done my phd so along with him we have made a this startup right now in from IIT Bombay and this is the sale performance we have made the 15 ampere sales right now in the trial and the outstanding behavior you are showing this is in the cycling of one c cycling so we are doing some more and we are interested to have take some vcs interest so that we can take it up for the sale manufacture I think this is my last last slide the several people need to be acknowledged this is my lab made 2019 before pandemic and thanks IIT Bombay and all our colleagues thank you thank you very much I'll stop it here if any questions I can happy to answer thank you so much uh Professor Mitra I was very insightful Jimmy I I can go and ask Professor Mitra some questions unless you want to oh please please go ahead yeah so you talk about salt for battery um and so what I would like to know and it's a it's a great technology if you get it to work if you get it to really be able to address some of the issues in the current application that would be great you know we don't use metals we don't use cobalt and nickel so it's all good I wonder you know if you can comment on the performance the agent degradation performance of this technology and why you what do you think needs to be done before we can get to a point we can deploy this technology and in a safely and performing way yeah that you are talking about alpha technique yeah so as per my opinion right now we are facing I mean why do I do spacing on the cycle life not much cycle life also self discharge and another one if you work on the internal battery I feel you understand that internal resistance is changing with time that's a bit is a big problem for bms design so whoever working on the electrical side so they understand the problem of sulfur batteries uh so these things uh is maybe inherent problems we need to look at maybe you need to design redesign our uh the power electronics uh but uh if we go to the chemical side I think we need to work on uh more on the stability and then obviously the anode need to be protected that's the main thing right now people are looking at it compared to because many work on the was done on many work was already done on the cathode design I don't think cathode may not be looked at that much uh electrolyte as well as the lithium metal passivations need to look at it another observation I have uh let's say uh the separator need to be looked at it right now super separator is also not suitable for lithium sulfur batteries so there are many opportunities in that space for researchers uh many opportunities but uh I feel we need to have strong funding uh well the large funding and strong uh groups together work together and bring it this is a lot of possibilities because sulfur is very uh the proposition is very good I think yeah for my uh very attractive and then uh and the energy density was if you can easily can get 400 water per kg so that's a very attractive thing for the battery technology and uh we need to work on it a lot of things are there we need to work on it which is not discussed uh most of the material science people they won't discuss much uh but there's a lot of insights out there needs to be worked up okay thank you thank you yeah professor Mitra so I have a I see that you're um you're you have a number of startups associated with these new efforts and uh coming from uh the Silicon Valley uh I'm interested in sort of what you feel like is the environment for new startups in India and uh you know how you know how how can this be improved if it's you know if it's uh and nurtured uh in India yeah this is a good question even I am also looking for that uh what I observe in India uh most of the startups are not interested on new technology or new uh let's say in India I'm talking about they're interested mainly on the software based or packing or module uh some kind of taken they are where they can get immediate uh some kind of revenue uh very few even uh very few even you can count who are working on the battery technology like a technological improvement or even the current technology needs a lot of efficiency improvement even the commercial technology is not very efficient even if you put in our climate it doesn't work even a few thousand cycles so they need to have a lot of new improvement is required and there I see there's a lack and there's a lot of opportunities we have a bright mind in our countries even uh even I see that California compared to California uh the startup culture where a lot of new innovations are coming compared to India uh I don't think any battery innovations is coming very few we can count and that is a one area we should actually look at yeah it's it's uh certainly that challenge is not unique India given the long adoption time it takes for new battery technologies and to scale it so you have to build a either a brand new factory or it could be very expensive to convert an existing battery factory to a new chemistry so this is this is one of the challenges we have and it's even seen quite a bit in Silicon Valley where new batteries technologies there's a tremendous interest in them but there's also this realization that adopting of a new chemistry is a journey and it has to be carefully considered which is one of the reasons why many people are looking at ways to facilitate sort of the pilot and scale up tasks you know before there's a whole huge investment to really vet it out on the most promising chemistry so even if you look at the commercial chemistry there's a lot of things are going on right now the process optimization so a lot of process which is time consuming even power consuming uh the big industry is also working on that to optimize that uh I think we should work on that in in a research level we should work on because this will be the one which our when you start looking at that many a large industry will be making sales here I think that type of expertise are required for even that that's my big wonder that how will you actually give that many manpower which is skill manpower this is a big problem will be there in India very soon yeah that so that actually sort of uh one of the challenges that we were mentioned was the needed manpower you just mentioned that also right now for that kind of a scale up we'll get the manpower manpower you get it but skill manpower that who having a skill in this technology that is missing right and so as someone who's sort of in the research and the educational capacity how do you see um how do you see that being addressed uh you know and what's what ideas do you have and how to help help address that huge chasm of a skilled manpower gap yeah so this is the one I think we should take it uh immediately because another five to seven years this manpower will be added to the system uh if you are uh not having a bigger like what I already talked about in what we're missing in India right now the large uh group projects large projects with along with foreign universities who has already known this type of uh we are already experienced some of the problems in the technological side and give an advanced training along with them I think we should have that type of center or like a consultia mode uh in a with a large funding because we need to have funding otherwise it's very difficult for one or two maybe five six institutes is not that I I don't think that they cannot produce how many students they can produce there's a par year two or three right so it's like a another team of like me can produce 20 maybe 100 but that is not the solution we need to have a few a few thousand have a huge workforce a skilled workforce to really go out and we'll not get because you see that they're even europe is facing that because they are not getting skilled manpower for their oh hi francesca hi she's listening to me now she was listening to you she's learning we have to start very soon here to educate the next battery workforce yes so yeah battery workforce is a is a is a challenge it's a problem also in us you know we need to really educate the next generation of battery system engineers we need we need them in many many sectors not just automotive transportation but also greed um so maybe we can invite Rahul to join us Rahul yeah thank you this is uh this has been a really insightful uh review of some of the challenges and some of the opportunities that india is uh is taking on right now and certainly it seems like um at the very beginning though uh india is blessed with a tremendous amount of capacity for renewables solar and wind it's it's uh could you speak on that a little bit um and you know how uh how india might best start to harness that right i think a very valid point uh raised by me so uh uh see frankly speaking india has been uh adopting the couple of different approaches here uh while as as i mentioned during my presentation as well there are certain parts of western india which has been uh truly blessed by uh excellent amount of solar radiation so those areas are actually being developed as large-scale solar parks uh right we have almost tens of gigawatts of solar power solar projects are being set up similarly uh states like uh states like gujarat states like uh karnataka which is down south in india uh these are certain states which actually uh are unique in the sense that they all they uh they have good amount of solar radiation as well as pretty decent amount of wind speeds as well right so frankly speaking uh these uh sites or these states have been developing as uh kind of hybrid projects uh right where we are mixing up solar and wind uh together and then supplying the power to the grid now uh situation happens is that uh there are certain uh locations where you are setting up huge chunks of solar parks or wind power wind backgrounds then uh there are uh locations where actually you are setting up a distributed storage or rather distributed solar rather right small small small amount of 10 10 5 10 megawatts of solar projects uh all or let's say uh cities like delhi where uh you might see more of rooftop projects because there is no space to set up a huge chunk of uh projects right so what is happening is uh that that's where uh storage uh actually starts playing its role right while in delhi uh we have been testing uh blockchains with these uh rooftop projects right uh feeder level distribution uh storage systems right where the the specific feeders are being strengthened to adopt to accept those uh uh those renewable energy generation uh as well as let's say the seki one gigawatt project which i was talking about that that is getting set up uh in the western part which is rajasthan and that is primarily being set up to actually absorb the humongous amount of storage power which is getting generated through the solar parks solar parks around that substation so that one gigawatt r actually will be uh not only will be smoothing the r e which is getting generated but also uh leveraging the transmission network also now there are certain very strategic projects uh which are being announced and are uh you can say a pet projects of the current government so uh projects in lay which is high up north right uh for almost uh multiple decades that that area has been left undeveloped i would say because of the remoteness of it because of the overall geography that is but one thing which is very peculiar to lay is that uh it has the maximum amount of solar radiation in the country much higher than the state of rajasthan right because of the clear sky is because of absolutely let's say no heat which again also incentivize higher generation of solar projects so uh that area now is getting developed and now frankly with the hydrogen also playing part of it a government is actually trying to develop that specific area uh in setting up of uh hybrid power hybrid power plants uh which some of it can be consumed locally for let's say production of hydrogen and then uh then again converting back into ammonia and then transporting that ammonia into other parts of the country right and then there are transmission line storage projects which are incentivizing the uh let's say the transportation of renewable power plants renewable energy from that place so uh because of its divergence nature india is actually adopting the multiple discrete uh uh policies uh to actually integrate this because ultimately you see we have committed 175 gigawatt by 2022 uh we are already at 150 we're very close to achieving that now the next target is the 450 megawatt and the 500 megawatt which has been announced by uh 2020 so those are the targets now frankly we have been we have started working on and this the transition uh has already started happening with uh certain decommissioning of captive or other power plants conventional power plants and replacing it with base load renewable energy power right so those uh transitions actually will drive the next wave of renewable generation in india so then are these solar power plants already uh cheaper than the plants that you're decommissioning um that's right so economically driven yes exactly much much cheaper so frankly if i talk about an indian rupees uh i'll i'll take an example the last thermal uh tender which was auction uh it was for although for shorter period of shorter contract period but the rates which were discovered was almost four four and a half rupees per unit right which is roughly around the 60s 570 around 70 cents right as against that the cheapest solar power currently in india is less than two rupees so less than half of the conventional park uh park house right obviously we will we should be adding transmission cost to it the infirmity cost to it but even after adding those costs uh renewable energy is still cheaper than the conventional power plants so it is purely on economics now which is happening with the transition which is happening i have a have a question on maybe following up on this comment and some point for Raul some point to you uh you show you talk about the fact that india is transitioning from um internal combustion engine power vehicles to be bothering only vehicles and we haven't really seen any hybrid vehicles in between so you haven't really talked about hybrid vehicles so is this transition going to happen completely from to be video there is a place for hybrid vehicles in there because i'm thinking about people living in rural areas they might not have access to you know um such a wealth to buy a bev and there might there might not be the infrastructure to charge the vehicles and things of that sort and for those people i i will think that hybrid vehicles would be a better um option can you please comment on that right right very valid question Simona here uh and this is one uh question which we as an investor also uh deliberate upon right which uh which will come first or which will take the lead to do that right however see uh i i let's from a from a history point of view uh there has been hybrid vehicles already present in india right uh there are specifics and when we talk about specifically about four wheelers there are hybrid vehicles which are present in india and are getting operated in india however uh their penetration is not even let's say 0.0001 percent uh for that right uh in the reason primarily for that is uh traditionally yes uh there has been uh predominance of ice vehicles right now what is happening in in specifically if i talk about rural uh india right so what is happening in rural india is that uh most of the two wheelers right they are getting transition or let's say uh there are two wheelers there are electric bicycles right so these these uh let's say low-range low-cost vehicles are actually taking uh predominance which actually are getting charged through home charging uh system where you can actually plug into the normal uh pass rockets uh which are in any case available in india so they're getting charged through that and uh for daily commute people have actually started using those vehicles right uh till date while let's globally uh uh the charge for let's the lead has been taken by four wheelers globally uh in this transition in india the transition is actually being led by two wheelers in three wheelers right that is where the real mass adoption is happening so my sense is i think uh uh while yes hybrid vehicles does have a real play here but uh the effective ecosystem for that uh i would say is not has really has not been developed right and now uh electric vehicles are taking uh dominance in developing that ecosystem okay most likely it will take the lead just a quick question on that is the government um giving incentive to buy those vehicles is there some sort of support uh there are there are certain uh supports uh both from central point of view as well as there are specific state electrical vehicle policies where they are providing subsidies they are providing uh capped charging rates to these vehicles so all of those supports uh there are uh exemption and registration charges so all of those supports are being given so specifically frankly in india and uh just just to uh let's say bifurcate between a electric vehicle and a normal vehicle right in india typically a normal passenger vehicle will have a white number plate with with black in your black numbers right uh electric vehicle will have a green number plate right so you can actually immediately see and identify so there are certain uh roads where tool chargers are also examined for these kind of vehicles so these are the specific let's say exemptions and incentives which are being given thank you yeah thank you uh professor mitra i had a question um and this is uh actually along have have you done any studies along reuse of batteries uh so if you were to have batteries that were uh say used in previous applications say electric vehicles as an example and then any studies on the reuse of those batteries for say stationary applications like the grid yeah there is uh studies going on but i have not done any study yet uh there is a possibility that uh second life what you're talking about second life yeah uh from the electric vehicle to storage i think there is options are going on and uh even people are predicting third life i don't know our uh climatic conditions third life will be there or not for most of the batteries so second life maybe uh economic i think uh will be useful so the studies are going on right now but it's no uh because we don't have much data right now of electric vehicles in our country so maybe another one or two years timeline we'll have that detail studies analysis and then come back whatever right now people are doing all our uh start data from uh like western countries like the united states or europe you're mainly united states that data but our country's data need to wait for another two three years let's see well along those same lines then brahu is your is your portfolio of energy storage solutions incorporating second life batteries as one of the permutations uh so i would say frankly uh this is definitely in plan in fact we have been scouting for uh second life battery uh suppliers or technology providers those batteries which we can test uh but as professor mitra has said the there are companies actually who are doing that but they're doing it at a very very small escape right and the batteries actually because see we would uh for our stationary storage projects we would be high voltage batteries so these people are primarily reusing or repurposing it for low voltage applications right now so they are as of now they're very limited the limited suppliers who are actually doing that but we frankly are very very interested in uh scouting for that and searching for that and we are actually trying to do a small pilot to actually test that out and try and see if that ecosystem or a business model can be worked out yeah yeah i know there's a lot of studies uh certainly in in the united states and especially around the sanford area because that's a big question as we electrify transportation and the batteries become available at or are none either going to be recycled because people a lot of cases are considering mandatory recycling which is going to be very expensive or second life proposing and repurposing and you know how the economics will play out in that space um uh the the uh climate around india can be a challenging uh temperature humidity can you speak to that in terms of how that compares to uh what what you've discovered in terms of battery performance in a region like india versus uh other parts of the world yeah i can quickly uh state about that and then professor mitra can take it over but yeah so frankly speaking uh this is actually the unique situation which we have found out uh and uh we found out it pretty quickly especially uh with the reason that most of the eye as i said it said was happening in the western part of india where it's it's basically a desert right so the temperatures are high the conditions are i will not say humid but definitely uh the you can say the air quality is not that great with lots of soil lots of particles in in the air right so that is definitely impacting the performance uh we have been when we actually designed the container uh for those storage systems so we had to keep those things in mind and uh but one thing which we have found out is the auxiliary consumption because of the cooling requirements especially in that time tends to be pretty high pretty pretty high so we are almost losing out almost nine to ten percent purely on auxiliary losses because of those climate conditions that's that's very that's very significant please go ahead okay one minute uh so i have done some simulations but experiments this view what we observe that uh if your temper because our temperature daytime and nighttime also a difference not only day wise even uh month wise all are fluctuating you can look at i put in the map what do you observe in simulations that even chemistry not only chemistry even format of the battery if it is cylindrical if it is prismatic there is a huge difference on the capacity fitting uh that we have simulated now we need to do some kind of experimentation and environmental chamber to simulate our Gujarat atmosphere and see how our Maharashtra we are very high humid and uh temperature high this type of atmosphere need to see which format which chemistry actually gives you better cycle life so we have the simulation right now but we need to see validated by the experiment even cell level there is a difference here um do we have time for one more question jimmy let's do one last one i just i i couldn't um you know i was thinking about lead acid batteries and you know that's uh that's a chemistry that's been around for you know 150 years and it's very stable cheap recyclable so you know there are a few good things about that chemistry that will probably um make a valuable solution for certain applications for renewable not much for automotive transportation because it's too heavy so have you looked into that as well or are you thinking about doing that or you are completely um discarding lead acid battery as a technology to improve renewable penetration no no definitely it does make sense Simona as you rightly said it has been uh for ages now uh and one of the good part about lead acid is that it is fully recyclable also yes right so that is that also helps however again uh while it is good for a few applications uh right when you're using it as a backup not so uh it's a high response uh this thing but for other applications frankly we would need uh much more reliability and uh voltage with which with the lead acid batteries you were struggling although we we still were able to do that but uh actually the transition and the life uh was playing uh big spoiler on that because ultimately let's say with lead with lithium ion you can actually run two cycles uh on various days uh with lead acid running two cycles will be almost next to impossible uh with such kind of applications and let's say they might last for another two years not more than that which again will pose a problem so right right while we have been using it but uh not so uh it's not so progressive it makes sense absolutely and does Dr. Mitra have an opinion about lead acid yeah um let us see the performance deterioration with let's say every 10 degrees centigrade per pound deterioration is already known and that we also observe in our field uh triumphs and uh but ion discourage fully but there is some percentage will be used again for economic uh I think analysis wise if you look at it uh some percentage will be there along with other chemistries like lithium uh chemistries only is penetrating but uh good amount good percentage will be there in India at least that's my opinion thank you well thank you very much so we are out of time uh I'd like to thank uh our speakers Rahul and Professor Mitra for joining us and our first kickoff on our region and we look to have this continue with uh deep dives into other regions of the world um so uh I'd also like to talk about our next upcoming symposia which is uh on March 11th and we'll be having presentations by both Dirk Sauer and our very own host currently Simona Anori uh please join us for that it'll be very exciting to hear about the transportation grid and advances in the TMI and BMS systems and also um I think we have another thing right yeah also we have our monthly tech talks our next one is coming up uh Tuesday March 1st and uh these are for those of you who are not aware these are the sort of headline research uh results uh presented by the students who are actually hands on in a lot of this research and also if you want to learn more about Stanford Energy uh you can check us up on the website there HTPPS online about Stanford IDU slash energy uh with that said thank you again to our speakers thank you Simona for co-hosting with me and and we look forward to seeing you guys on March 11th and then uh for those participants that have received invitations for the backstage we'll see you shortly on the backstage thank you very much everyone be safe take care bye