India wants to beat Tesla's Gigafactory at 20% less cost

• India plans to set up its own battery storage manufacturing plants styled after Tesla’s ‘Gigafactory’ in Nevada, United States.
  
• The Tesla-Panasonic venture called for an investment of $5 billion but India’s only planning to spend $4 billion to set up four different factories.
  
• Each factory will have the capacity to manufacture 10 gigawatts hours of power per year.
  

India plans to set up at least four Tesla-type ‘Gigafactories’ in the country but for $1 billion less than it took Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla.

Musk’s Gigafactory in Nevada, expected to launch next year, has a theoretical capacity of producing 35 gigawatt hours (GWh) of batteries per year and took an investment of $5 billion to setup.

Panasonic, who's partnered with Tesla to build the Nevada facility, has stated actual output is actually at around 24 GWh.

India’s battery manufacturing plants, on the other hand, plan on producing 10 GWh per factory every year — that’s a total of 40Gwh — with an investment of $4 billion, according to a LiveMint report citing sources.

Plans to go big

Producing batteries goes hand-in-hand with India’s plans to push for electric vehicles in order to reduce pollution and cut down its dependence on oil imports — which currently sits at over 80%, making India the world’s third-largest oil consumer.

NITI Aayog estimates that India is going to need at least six such battery storage manufacturing plans by 2025 and six more by 2030.

So, accounting of an ever increasing demand for energy, it has recommended setting up 11 factories by 2025 and another 13 by 2023 — bringing the grand total to 24 factories producing 240 GWh every year.

One GWh of battery power is enough to provide electricity to nearly 1 million households for a complete hour and power 30,000 electric cars.

Government involvement

In order to get manufacturers on board, India may offer incentives like concessional financing options or a minimum alternative tax (MAT), the report said.

While the government will be setting up these factories, it has no plans to interfere with the technology. Which technology should be manufactured will determined depending on demand and prices in the market.

India is now a world leader in renewable energy with its ambitious plans to set up clean energy installments and pump up investment, according to BloombergNEF’s Climatescope report. As of now, the country has around 80 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy capacity with plans to reach 175 GW by 2022 and 500 GW by 2030 as part of its climate change commitments.