India’s Large State-owned Behemoths Look To EV and Storage For Future Growth

Will NTPC, PowerGrid and BHEL succeed in their EV & Energy Storage Plans

India’s large PSU’s such as NTPC, PowerGrid and BHEL are looking to electric vehicles and energy storage as future growth drivers for their companies. The Indian government has ambitious targets for both these technologies and there is massive growth potential. Already some private companies are manoeuvring themselves to capture a large chunk of this growth opportunity.

Read about India’s EV Market.

1) NTPC which has ambitious plans to add large chunks of power generating capacity needs to find consumers for this power. There is power surplus in the country right now with many of the thermal coal powered plants running at very low utilizations. Energy efficiency is further dampening the demand for electricity. NTPC needs to find new areas for consumption of its main product – power. Electric Vehicles represent a complete non-traditional area of growth for NTPC as currently, all cars run on fossil fuels. With electricity being the main power source, it will allow NTPC to find good demand for its new power generation plants which are under construction.

2) BHEL which is one of India’s largest capital goods companies is also looking to diversify into the making of Electric powered buses, cars and trucks. The company which mainly makes equipment for coal power stations faces a dilemma as the demand for coal power has been plummeting. Solar power is the new coal and CEA has predicted that India does not need any new coal power plant for the next 10 years. The company desperately needs to find new areas of growth though I doubt that the company has the capabilities to get into a consumer-facing competitive industry such as EVs. It will have to build up automobile technology which does not look feasible to me. BHEL remains a great short in my view.

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3) PowerGrid which is the monopoly operator of electricity grids in India is looking at both EV charging points and energy storage as expansion areas. I think PowerGrid is well placed in both these areas since energy storage is going to form a key growth area for power grids in the future. Integrating and balancing increasing amounts of renewable energy will require large grid-scale energy storage. Companies such as Tesla and AES have already demonstrated massive lithium battery farms in conjunction with electricity grids. PowerGrid can also build out EV charging points across its massive network of electricity grids. It not only has the existing land and infra but also the main fuel which goes into the charging points.