Mercom Reports 8.2 GWh of Indian Battery-Storage Additions in First-Half 2026

Backlog edition: 2026-09-17. Reviewed on 20 September 2026.

India added 8.2 gigawatt-hours of battery energy storage in the first half of 2026, according to Mercom India Research's September report. The figure compares with 98.4 megawatt-hours in the corresponding period a year earlier.

The scale of the increase is striking, but the denominator matters. Converting both figures to the same unit gives a ratio of roughly 83 times. Mercom describes the rise as nearly 84-fold; it should not be treated as an independently measured growth trend that will repeat each year.

Capacity accumulated, and capacity added

Mercom places cumulative installed battery storage at 9.3 GWh by June 2026. It reports standalone systems as 83% of that cumulative capacity. That share refers to the installed total, not automatically to every project added during the first half.

The quarterly pattern was uneven: the report puts second-quarter additions at 3.6 GWh, down 22% from the preceding quarter. A large year-on-year increase can therefore coexist with a sequential decline.

Reading storage numbers correctly

Energy capacity, expressed in GWh, describes how much energy a system can store under its stated rating. Power capacity, expressed in GW, describes a rate of delivery. The two units cannot be substituted for each other when comparing project additions with tender or auction pipelines.

Installed capacity also differs from announced or awarded projects. A tender indicates an intended procurement; commissioning provides a different kind of evidence. Combining them would overstate what is already available to the grid.

The report points to a substantial increase in installed storage from a small starting base. For the next stage, commissioning records, operating performance and project-level delivery will be more useful than extrapolating one unusually large growth multiple.

Sources

• Source 1