Energy Storage Companies in India get gobbled by Foreign MNCs (Legrand,Schneider)

India’s Energy Storage Market is seeing strong action from foreign MNCs looking to grab a piece of this fast growing market. India’s Electricity Situation is quite bad with huge deficits and problems across the whole supply chain starting from fuel to the end distribution. A Huge Segment of the Population has to depend on privately generated power to meet their energy needs. Storage of power becomes essential for places where power goes off for 8-10 hours a day. Using Lead Acid Batteries is the only cheap option in these cases as running a diesel genset my not be convenient for a home. UPS companies have been doing great business in the country for a long time and will continue to do so.

Recognizing the fast grow and massive revenues in this market,foreign MNC like Legrand and Schneider Electric have been paying top dollar to acquire domestic companies. The market has a great future as increasing penetration of renewable energy will require more Energy Storage solutions in the future as well. The falling prices of solar panels has made it attractive to pair it with energy storage to provide power in energy challenged areas.Note Schneider has been on an acquisition spree buying up companies in the smart metering,security solutions as  well electrical space.ABB another electrical giant has been buying up companies globally at a frentic pace as well. The Smart Grid Industry in general seems more M&A than any other Green sector.

Smart Grid Consideration has picked up pace in recent days with Cisco acquiring a couple of companies.Now Constellation Energy,the Largest US Competitive Electricity Provider has gobbled up CPower an Energy Demand Response Provider with a 850 MW Capacity.This increases Constellations Total Capacity to 1500 MW making its one of the largest DR players after EnerNoc and Comverge.Note Demand Response is a virtual way of reducing peak energy requirements through voluntary reduction in electricity by residential and commercial customers.DR companies like EnerNoc help in organizing these Power Reductions which is known as Demand Response.This Sector has been one of the fastest growing sectors in the Smart Grid Area because of its economically viable on its own without subsidies and helps reducing the Carbon Footprint at the same time.

Schneider takes over Luminous for Rs 1,400 cr

Schneider Electric, the $20-billion French engineering company, today said it was acquiring a 74 per cent stake in Luminous Power Technologies for Rs 1,400 crore. Luminous is a New Delhi-based maker of inverters and industrial batteries. The deal values the company at Rs 1,866 crore.Schneider has made six acquisitions in India since mid-2009, beginning with Conzerv Systems, a Bangalore-based energy metering company. It acquired Meher capacitors, an arm of the Bangalore-based MEHER group, in August the same year and two units of the Mumbai-based Zicom Electronic Security Systems in March 2010. It acquired the digilink business of Smartlink Network Systems and a 75 per cent stake in APW President Systems earlier this year.

 

Legrand to buy Numeric’s UPS business for Rs 837 cr

Chennai-based electronics equipment manufacturer, Numeric Power Systems Limited, is set to sell its uninterrupted power systems (UPS) division to Indo Asian Electric Private Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Legrand France SA, for a consideration of Rs 837.08 crore.Both the parties have already entered into a business transfer agreement, and Numeric will continue to carry on its other activities like green energy (solar and wind power), iron and alloy foundry production and LED lighting. At present, Numeric derives 75 per cent of its revenues from UPS.