An overview of the battery and energy storage markets
Published by Batteries International in association with Energy Storage Journal
The yearbook
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EDITORIAL
Energy storage
— India’s new paradigm
I
ndia is in the middle of an energy and energy storage revolution without precedent. In the last three years the country has outlined and now embarked on ambitious plans for its future. Gone are traditional infrastructure development models. Gone are out-dated views on how technology should be used. And gone is the obsolete thinking that characterized so much of emerging market economic advancement. Some commentators are talking about it becoming a new paradigm for the emerging world. That said, in one sense what India has done is not so new. Every country has to assess its energy requirements in the near and long term and work out how it can balance its books. But what is new is the way that India plans to tackle this. The new paradigm is based on the idea that new technologies can leap-frog the incumbent one. A good example of this is in the telecoms market. Mature economies took time and huge amounts of capital to develop their landline infrastructure. But the advent of mobile telephony changed all that. India is a classic in this respect. It has leapt up to become a sophisticated telecoms market in a handful of years. A decade ago its shaky infrastructure had 40 million users, threequarters of whom used landlines. Last October, the telecom regulator announced that there were 1.17 billion users of cell phones and just 22 million that had landlines. The leap forward has had other benefits. India has become the second largest telecoms market in the world and the second largest manufacturer and exporter of cell phones. Samsung Electronics, for example, has opened the world’s largest mobile phone factory in India. This will double Samsung’s Noida unit capacity for mobile phones to 120 million units a year from 68 million. And it is the same thinking that underscores the country’s race into the world of renewable energy and energy storage.
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This April’s approval of the National Mission on Transformative Mobility and Battery Storage takes the government’s plans one step further. India is running full tilt at moving to replace everything from two-wheelers, three-wheelers, cars, trucks and buses that relies on internal combustion engines with electric vehicles. Instead it intends to leap frog any gradualist move into EVs and energy storage seen in western economies by embracing the new technologies whole-heartedly. From a start-up of virtually nothing it has become the second largest solar market in the world. Its plans to deploy 20GW of solar by 2022 were achieved in January last year. The new target is for 100GW by 2022. Some analysts reckon that the final figure for that year will be 175GW. In terms of energy storage government agency NITI Aayog and RMI estimate that India would require a minimum of 20 gigafactory-scale battery manufacturing plants, collectively producing approximately 800GWh of batteries per year by 2030. Tenders for start up projects are emerging. The side benefits are enormous. The cost of creating these gigafactories will be replaced by ever lower imports of foreign oil. India’s air pollution problem — nine of the 10 most polluted cities in the world are Indian — could hopefully be solved as a side benefit. The vision of the government is huge. So too is the commitment of those in the energy industry. India’s new paradigm deserves to be a success. We hope that this our first yearbook looking at India’s huge potential and capabilities in energy storage will prove useful in helping others come to understand this country — soon to become the third largest economy in the world. Karen Hampton Michael Halls Publisher Editor
Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook • 1
CONTENTS
CONTENTS
13
Editorial
17
61
1
Energy storage, the big picture
4
International business in India
13
India: business and society
17
The lead versus lithium debate
23
Profile Exide Industries
35
Profile: Amara Raja
41
Key facts about lead
46
Lithium battery manufacturing
47
Interview: IESA’s Walawalker
51
Profile: Daramic in India
55
Interview: Ador Digatron’s Bhambhani
58
Separators
60
E-Rickshaws 74
Publisher: Karen Hampton, karen@batteriesinternational.com +44 779 852 337 Editor: Michael Halls, editor@batteriesinternational.com +44 7977 016 918 Assistant sales manager: Jade Beevor, jade@energystoragejournal.com +44 1243 782 275 Business development manager June Moultrie, june@batteriesinternational.com +44 7528 503 714
61
Interview: Ilzda’s Pugazhenthy
64
Lead Recycling
69
Abertax battery monitoring system
72
Blood lead levels
74
Four start-ups to watch
82
Other lead players
84
Reception: +44 1 243 782 275 Subscriptions and admin manager: Claire Ronnie, subscriptions@batteriesinternational.com admin@batteriesinternational.com +44 1243 782 275 Special reports editor Wyn Jenkins, wyn.jenkins@serenglobalmedia.com +44 1792 293 222
2 • Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook
Staff reporters: Andrew Godfrey, Debbie Mason Design and production: Antony Parselle, aparselledesign@me.com +44 1604 632 663 International advertising representation: advertising@batteriesinternational.com
The contents of this publication are protected by copyright. No unauthorised translation or reproduction is permitted. ISSN 1462-6322 © 2019 Mustard Seed Publishing, UK company no: 5976361. Printed in the UK via Thisismethod UK
Disclaimer: Although we believe in the accuracy and completeness of the information contained in this magazine, Mustard Seed Publishing makes no warranties or representation about this. Nor should anything contained within it should be construed as constituting an offer to buy or sell securities, or constitute advice in relation to the buying or selling of investments.
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ENERGY STORAGE: REGULATION AND THE BIG PICTURE
Make in India The future of India’s energy storage industry is inextricably linked with the performance of the Indian economy and the dictates of the government, writes Andrew Godfrey.
4 • Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook
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ENERGY STORAGE: REGULATION AND THE BIG PICTURE
… and beyond I
rrespective of this year’s election outcome — the result of which happens after this yearbook is published — the government’s “Make in India” initiative will continue beyond 2019. Although it was a campaign policy that launched Narendra Modi into the position of prime minister in 2014, it’s quite clearly been a success, though perhaps not as successful as many had anticipated. Amid the pre-2019 electioneering squabbling, accusations were bandied around that data had been massaged, statistics meddled with, and false employment figures published. Whether these are true or not is basically irrelevant: Make in India makes perfect sense and the overall ambition — to propel India in the direction of the path that China had taken to become a richer nation — is a vital target to reach. One of Modi’s election promises is the aspiration for India to become the world’s third largest economy by 2030. “It’s a realistic target, when you look at the trajectory the country is on at the moment,” says one commentator. “Remember GDP growth doesn’t happen in isolation. As a rough rule of thumb every 1% increase in GDP requires a similar percentage increase in energy usage.” Make in India had a variety of aspects — it was aimed to boost quality manufacturing, reduce dependence on foreign imports, create jobs and attract foreign investment into the economy. Underneath there was a variety of subtexts: improving the ease of doing business in India, protecting and developing intellectual property and copyright (a subtext that has eluded much of China’s burgeoning industrialization) all in the context of increasing manufacturing growth by between 12% and 14% in the medium term. Make in India has only been one of various government initiatives aimed at the energy sector. Saubhagya In September 2017 Modi announced the introduction of the Saubhagya scheme (or
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in full Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijli Har Ghar Yojana) which aimed to provide electricity to every household in rural India. Early in 2018 the Ministry of Power announced that it had achieved 100% village electrification across the country. And then this January the government trumpeted that it had achieved universal household electrification. However, according to the Initiative for Sustainable Energy Policy (better known as ISEP) this figure is inaccurate as many households are suspicious about installing electricity meters. Nevertheless, the Saubhagya scheme, has been hugely positive, irrespective of some of its criticisms. One of the interesting aspects to the issue of electrical supply in India is that, in the words of one commentator, “there is already 24x7 electricity in India, we have surplus electricity, the only thing that’s stopping us from getting electricity is because power plants are not working to their full capacity due to political issues.”
There is already 24x7 electricity in India, we have surplus electricity, the only thing that’s stopping us from getting electricity is because power plants are not working to their full capacity due to political issues LEAD ACID BATTERIES ON A ROLL Research firms predict that India’s lead acid battery market will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of between 7% and 9% over the next five year period. The SLI — starter, lighting, ignition — battery segment will continue to take the greatest revenue over the period. Although flooded batteries, being cheaper than sealed batteries, made up the majority of sales, VRLA battery sales continues to increase in market share. Automobile sales increased by around 14% in 2017 and a roughly similar figure in 2018. Vehicle production in India had a CAGR of nearly 6% during 20112017, contributing towards the demand of SLI lead acid batteries in the country. The next most profitable sector is the stationary battery segment.
Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook • 5
FORMATION EQUIPMENT
Raise your performance
ENERGY STORAGE: REGULATION AND THE BIG PICTURE
Solar without storage makes little sense if the two exist in isolation to each other and ambitious energy storage plans are in place for the future
The political issues that beset the industry are a lack of investment in the transmission and distribution systems which are running at a loss. Solar Adoption of solar power has been rapid and government targets have been leapfrogged. An initial target of deployment of 20GW by 2022 was achieved by January 2018. This target was raised to 100GW for 2022. The government has approved plans for 14 solar parks as part of National Solar Mission of reaching this figure by 2022. Some analysts believe that the 100GW figure may reach as
8 • Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook
much as 175GW by 2022. India is now the second largest solar market in the world. The initiative — coming from Modi at an India Africa summit in 2015— for creating the International Solar Alliance has proven a success. Over 120 nations have joined and the ISA is headquartered in Gurugram about 20 miles from New Delhi. According to the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (better known as MNRE), India will have 227GW of renewable energy capacity by March 2022, which will put it in the top three countries making investments in the sector. The positive outlook for solar must be tempered with the fact that the government rooftop policy is flawed in its execution. The weight of Indian bureaucracy lies heavy on the process which is a cumbersome one, especially for the average citizen. “It may take three to four months from the date of application to receiving a grant of connectivity even for a residential rooftop solar system,” says one solar installer. “There are further shared approvals and clearances between multiple departments such as the regulatory commission, state nodal agencies, discoms, urban local and the like which may cause delays. The process of obtaining clearances should be made easy clear and hassle-free.” Other obstacles to solar deployment, says the installer, is the lack of a trained workforce and the influx of sub-standard cheaper products from China. Solar plus storage Solar without storage makes little sense if the two exist in isolation to each other and ambitious energy storage plans are in place for the future. MNRE launched a draft of the National Energy Storage Mission to provide a policy framework in 2017 which was discussed throughout 2018. In March a version of the plan known as the National Mission on Transformative Mobility and Battery Storage was approved by the Indian cabinet. The focus is on local manufacturing across the whole supply chain for EVs including battery and cell manufacturing. The mission includes a five-year phased manufacturing program to set up large-scale, export-competitive integrated batteries and cell-manufacturing giga-plants in India. A phased roadmap to implement battery manufacturing at a giga-scale is still under
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ENERGY STORAGE: REGULATION AND THE BIG PICTURE
consideration with an initial focus on largescale module and pack assembly plants by 2019-2020, followed by integrated cell manufacturing by 2021-2022. While putting energy storage to the
forefront is hugely important so too is getting commercial interest. Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) has released two major tenders including 1.2GW of solar PV combined with 3,600MWh of energy storage
All India installed capacity of power stations as on March 31, 2018 — in MW Ownership /Sector
Thermal (coal, gas, diesel)
Nuclear Hydro Renewables Grand total
Northern region
State
19,767.20
0
8,643.55
689.56
29,100.31
Private
23,318.83
0
2514
11,854.66
37,687.49
Central
15,634.43
1,620
8,596.22
329
26,179.65
Sub Total
58,720.46
1,620
19,753.77
12,873.22
92,967.45
Western region
State
24,129.82
0
5,446.5
311.19
29,887.51
Private
38,961.67
0
481
19,473.89
58,916.56
Central
18,323.62
1,840
1520
661.3
22,344.92
Sub Total
81,415.11
1840
7,447.5
20,446.38
111,148.99
Southern region
State
20,512.36
0
11,808.03
518.02
32,838.41
Private
17,920.3
0
0
33,359.36
51,279.66
Central
14,584.6
3,320
0
491.9
18,396.5
Sub Total
53,017.26
3,320
11,808.03
34,369.28
102,514.57
7,170
0
3,537.92
225.11
10,933.03
Eastern region
State
Private
6,375
0
399
803.29
7,577.29
Central
13,876.64
0
1,005.2
10
14,891.84
Sub Total
27,421.64
0
4,942.12
1,038.4
33,402.16 1,170.2
North Eastern region
State
493.95
0
422
254.25
Private
24.5
0
0
23.31
47.81
Central
1,773.62
0
920
5
2,698.62
Sub Total
2,292.07
0
1,342
282.56
3,916.63
Islands
State
40.05
0
0
5.25
45.3
Private
0
0
0
2.21
2.21
Central
0
0
0
5.1
5.1
Sub Total
40.05
0
0
12.56
52.61
All India
State
72,113.38
0
29,858
2,003.37
103,974.75
Private
86,600.3
0
3,394
65,516.72
155,511.02
Central
64,192.91
6,780
12,041.42
1,502.3
84,516.63
Total
222,906.59
6,780 45,293.42
69,022.39 344,002.39
Break up of renewable power generation as of March 31, 2018 in MW Small Hydro Power
4,485.81
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Wind Power BM Power/Cogen. 34,046
Bio-Power Waste to Energy 8,700.8
Bio-Power 138.3
Solar Power
Total
21,651.48 69,022.39
Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook • 9
ENERGY STORAGE: REGULATION AND THE BIG PICTURE
One of Modi’s election promises is the aspiration for India to become the world’s third largest economy by 2030. It’s a realistic target, when you look at the trajectory the country is on at the moment DISCRIMINATORY GLOBAL SALES TAX The Goods and Services Tax Council cut the GST rate on lithium batteries from 28% to 18% at a meeting on July 21 last year, along with a cut to 12% for fuel cell vehicles. However lead acid batteries, and other battery chemistries, were not mentioned. Lead battery manufacturers immediately protested against the cut in rates claiming it to be discriminatory against non-lithium products. Rahul Walawalkar, executive director of IESA, said: “A further reduction of GST is essential to boost energy storage adoption in India, which can help accelerate investment in manufacturing as well. “We urge the finance ministry to extend the rate reduction to other forms of energy storage technologies including advanced lead acid, sodium-based batteries, flow batteries, metal air batteries, ultracapacitors, fuel cells and thermal storage technologies.” There were also inconsistencies in the application of the tax. A spokesperson for Customized Energy Solutions India, a member of IESA said: “There is no change in the GST for lead acid batteries, which remains at 28%, but if the lead acid battery is integrated with solar components, then the effective GST is 5%.” Others point out that while electric vehicles sold with batteries are charged 12% GST, batteries sold without vehicles are taxed 28%. GST is applied in five bands — 28%, 18%, 12%, 5% and zero tax.
10 • Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook
connected to the national grid, as well as a smaller tender for 200MW solar with 300MWh of storage in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. However, as with previous tenders issued in May 2018, these tenders are being extended and may be reduced due to lukewarm interest from developers. As part of the Make in India thinking on the energy sector, the focus has also been reducing the country’s huge dependence on oil by encouraging renewable energy. The ambition may be noble but analysis by BP, the oil giant, reckons that by 2050 India’s coal consumption is set to soar. In its most recent BP Energy Outlook, the firm’s analysis is grim. By 2040 India will be needing 11% of the world’s energy as its growth will soar. “Demand for coal sees the biggest growth, expanding by 132% followed by renewables (+1409%), nuclear (+412%), hydro (+80%), gas (+185%) and oil (+129%),” it reports. “The share of coal in the energy mix falls from 57% in 2016 to 50% by 2040, while the share of renewables rises from 2% to 13%. Coal remains the dominant fuel produced in India with a 63% share of total production in 2040. Renewables overtake gas and then oil by 2020 as the second largest source of energy production.” FAME-1 and FAME-II A major move to encourage EV transportation started in April 2015 with the so-called FAME-1 initiative. FAME-1 — Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Hybrid and Electric Vehicles in India — ended this March. This was specifically a subsidy for all battery powered vehicles. Until last September about 90% of the subsidy went to lead powered electric scooters. This was removed that month and dealing a blow to the e-scooter market. The second iteration of the incentive, known as FAME-II, came into force at the end of March. The announcement by the Ministry of Heavy Industry and Public Enterprise largely hit OEMs off-guard as it introduced new restrictions on the eligibility criteria for electric buses, passenger vehicles, three and two-wheelers. “FAME-II continues to exclude lead acid battery-powered two-wheelers,” research house CRISIL said this April. “Additionally, as per the latest eligibility criteria, e-scooters ought to have a minimum range of 80km per charge and a minimum top speed of 40 kmph,
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ENERGY STORAGE: REGULATION AND THE BIG PICTURE
One result of the change of incentives will be to push battery manufacturers and OEMs further along the technological road in terms of developing better products. But in the near term it will hit both the uptake of new vehicles and the related battery market. along with clauses on energy consumption efficiency, minimum acceleration and higher number of charging cycles. “This precludes more than 90% of the remaining lithium ion battery-driven models from the subsidy.” The outlay of Rs895 crore for FAME-I has been increased 11-fold to Rs10,000 crore in FAME-II, which will be implemented over three years starting this April 1 and will be applicable to vehicles with ‘advanced batteries’ (excluding lead acid ones). About 85% of the outlay would be as a demand incentive applicable to buses, passenger vehicles and three-wheelers registered for commercial usage and public transport, along with privately owned twowheelers. One result of the change of incentives will be to push battery manufacturers and OEMs further along the technological road in terms of developing better products. That said in the near term it will hit both the uptake of new vehicles and the related battery market. In a further move to advance the technology of the small automotive market. FAME-II has also mandated that all buses and passenger vehicles (except e-rickshaws and e-carts) should have regenerative braking capability to be eligible for the incentive. Since regenerative braking puts greater stress on the battery and rapidly shortens cycle life better batteries will be needed. This will do three things: improve the standard of EV manufacture, boost the uptake of advanced EFB (enhanced flooded batteries) and AGM (absorbent glass matt) product and provide a fillip to the introduction of lithium batteries.
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TELECOMS — THE PROMISE FOR LEAD
The Indian telecommunication sector continues to grow rapidly and was the world’s second-largest telecommunications market, with a subscriber base of 1.19 billion as of October 2018 . Of this cell phone users accounted for 1.17 billion an increase of 725,000 during that month. At the end of October 2018 there was just 22 million landline subscribers — a figure that fell by 89,000 that month. As is common in the developing world technology has skipped a generation and the landline infrastructure has become outdated by comparison with the booming mobile phone sector. The telecom sector is one of the most promising sectors for lead-acid battery use with its requirement for remote off-grid telecoms bases. The rise in mobile-phone penetration rates and decline in data costs, associated with the intense competition among India’s telecoms players, could add nearly 500 million new internet consumers in India, over the next five years. As of October 31 last year, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India said the top five wireless broadband service providers were Reliance Jio (263 million), Vodafone Idea (101 million), Bharti Airtel (99 million), BSNL (11 million) and Tata Teleservices (2 million). Government initiatives, such as auctioning of the 5G spectrum, renewables integration, and the directive of the TRAI directive of relocating 75% and 33% of their cell towers in rural and urban areas respectively to hybrid power by December 2020, are likely to further supplement the demand for telecommunication infrastructure.
Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook • 11
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INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS IN INDIA
Opening up the roads of commerce
The ability to do business in India continues to improve but there are still challenges ahead — most particularly over how closely companies tie themselves to the domestic economy.
T
he figure may not seem impressive but doing business in India is getting better. According to the latest World Bank annual ratings, India is ranked 77 among 190 world economies in terms of the ease of doing business. But what is impressive is that it jumped an astonishing 23 places last year as the government eased up on the regulations to let the economy leap forward. And all the more so that in 2014 it was ranked 142nd (later revised to 140th). Much of the credit for this goes to the opening up by the 2014-2019 government under prime minister Narendra Modi, which made
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extensive moves to make foreign investment in India simpler as well as transacting imports and exports. The government’s Make in India initiative continues to lead to large-scale investment into the country. Firms such as mobile phone manufacturer Samsung Electronics, for example, has opened the world’s largest mobile phone factory in India. This will double Samsung’s Noida unit capacity for mobile phones to 120 million units a year from 68 million. But that’s not to say there isn’t a wide variety of opinions on how foreign companies should do business in India and the issues
Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook • 13
INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS IN INDIA
SETTING UP There are hazards too, as in any country, in starting up a business. The cost of starting a business in India is high, and the procedures involved can be daunting without local knowledge. There are 12 procedures to complete in the initial set up of a business according to TMF Group, which specializes in this kind of corporate work. TMF says it takes almost a month (27 days) to complete the tasks on average, which is well above the OECD average of 12 days. The process of starting a business in India has recently been simplified by merging the applications of the account and tax numbers with the
incorporation process under the ministry of corporate affairs. A foreign investor seeking to enter India can go through the representative, branch or liaison office or set up as a private limited company or a limited liability company. Once obtained the company can open a bank account. A foreign company doing business in India can set up a branch office, which is liable for taxes, and where operations are limited. A project office can be set up to carry out specific projects, and a liaison office provides a business foothold but cannot directly conduct commercial activity or earn
It’s the big question. Do you want to have a permanent manufacturing base in the country and expose yourself to an economic and political climate very different and sometimes disadvantageous from your own? Or do you want to leverage all the positive aspects of a manufacturing location at the heart of your sales market? 14 • Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook
any income in India. While the law allows foreign citizens to become full-time directors/partners, at least one of the directors/partners should be a resident of India, and as such, the director needs to get a director identification number. The company then needs a digital signature certificate from a government certified agency, and a choice of up to two possible names for the company to be given to the local company registrar. Once these conditions and applications have been approved the company can begin trading in India, according to TMF Group.
that they face. In principle there are two basic models over where to base your operations. Do you want to have a permanent manufacturing base in the country and expose yourself to an economic and political climate very different and sometimes disadvantageous from your own? Or do you want to leverage all the positive aspects of a manufacturing location at the heart of your sales market? Each side of the argument has its proponents. International firms such as Digatron, Daramic or Wirtz Manufacturing have moved their manufacturing operations into the country with success. Other firms — equally respected by Indian buyers — continue to prefer to be an international supplier rather than a domestic manufacturer/ supplier. “Most international firms don’t find any real difficulty with doing business in India,” says Craig Brunk, a vice president of international battery testing manufacturer Bitrode. “I certainly haven’t and in my years of selling testing equipment into India, I can’t remember having ever had any real difficulties. “In fact it’s rather the opposite in that we have an in-built advantage. Indian firms recognize a greater value or quality in our product being manufactured overseas rather than domestically. Certainly there’s a price premium that is understood by the local market in our products made in the US. “That’s not to say that Indian manufacturing is of a lower quality — rather that the domestic market perceives it to be.”
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INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS IN INDIA
Firms such as Ador Digatron, a joint venture between the Indian testing firm Ador and its international Germany-based counterpart, reckon that such a premium doesn’t exist. “We’ve blind-tested our German and Indian machines and our own experts can’t tell there is a difference between what was made where,” says a company spokesperson. “Something that is made in India is absolutely identical to that made in Germany and our customers recognize this.”
Most international firms don’t find any real difficulty with doing business in India. I certainly haven’t in all my years of selling testing equipment into India Craig Brunk, Bitrode
ADVICE ON DOING BUSINESS
A UK-based export guide to trading with India says: “The country is a price-competitive market and price is an important consideration for consumers. Firms will be expected to negotiate on the price for its goods and to discount. Firms must check what the import duty is for its product in India to see if the export is viable. It is likely to be a minimum of 35% once all additional taxes are included. Firms should be aware of: • multiple religious, ethnic and annual variations in holiday timings, requiring careful planning for business trips • barriers to trade and investment in some sectors because of regulatory constraints, local sourcing requirements and import tariffs • intellectual property protection (IP) • risk of delays due to administrative requirements • difficulty of land acquisition • access to the right skills in the local workforce • infrastructure challenges, including for distribution and logistics • extremely hot weather in summer and wet weather in the monsoon season can affect business • risk of bribery and corruption Source: Doing Business in India Guide produced by the UK Institute of Export and International Trade
16 • Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook
Other international firms are still puzzling over the issue of location. TBS Engineering, headquartered in the UK but with operations around the world, is considering setting up operations in India. An announcement on the decision will probably be made later this year. Industry speculation suggests that it will locate in Pune, close to Digatron’s operations. Digatron and TBS have a long history of collaboration. Irrespective of location, most international vendors say one of the key things to have in place is a good handling agent on the ground that can deal with customs, the paperwork and the bureaucracy that still characterizes much of modern India. Payment terms via letters of credit or documentary collection are rarely a problem. The alternative is payment or partial payment in advance. Open account is not allowed in India. That said the contract should be clearly defined and always state the terms for delivery and payment of goods and services. Indian law does not regulate late payments, and settlement action through the courts can be expensive and take a long time. India has an extensive bank system that despite the everpresent bureaucracy is business supportive. But that’s not to say everything is easy whether machinery is made in India or outside it. Many international suppliers say that shipping the goods to India is not the end of the story; rather, there are difficulties in moving products from state to state. In fact the biggest challenge that companies face is the unique architecture of how Indian governance works, which is badly intertwined between the central government and state governments. The reason for this problem is simple. State laws and incentives are structured to attract investments, which the local political bodies see as critical to driving economic growth. But they are also dependent on the electoral constituencies of ruling parties. It’s not uncommon for neighbouring state governments to have vastly differing legislations on labour, land acquisition, commercial taxes, priority sector categorization for incentives and intrastate movement of goods. Put simply, the attractiveness of the fact that India is one land mass doesn’t offer any easy benefits of scale for the logistics of delivery. These come into play in a substantial way when planning investments in India. A good location for distribution may turn out to be a poor one for doing business.
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INDIA — BUSINESS AND SOCIETY
How Indian business ticks Understanding the Indian business world is as much about understanding the psyche of this great, intriguing and sometimes puzzling nation.
R
elationships matter. It’s both blindingly obvious and a fact that’s frequently overlooked. It’s the basic key to doing business everywhere. But it’s even more the case in India, where relationships are the bedrock for all long-term commerce and where correct behaviour — courteousness, concern and interest in the other party
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— are valued in good times and in bad. “It’s one of the most interesting countries I’ve ever worked in,” says Craig Brunk, a vice president at Bitrode, the international battery testing manufacturer. “It’s a country of endless variety and also one where customer relationships take time to be created. “Trust is always important in doing busi-
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INDIA — BUSINESS AND SOCIETY
In its dash for growth, parts of the country have leapfrogged existing technologies — mobile telephones are the norm for doing business, landlines are the exception, and India’s silicon valley hotspot in Bangalore is set to become the largest IT cluster on the planet, overtaking the US by 2020 in terms of IT professionals, jobs and exports. ness. But in India, perhaps because it’s still a developing nation, trust is yet more important. Mere friendliness and courtesy are not enough — you also have to prove that you can deliver, not just talk about it. Relationships are for the long term.” India is also in many ways an astonishing country to work in — a nuclear power that still, until recently, had some 200 million without electricity in the home. It has a rapidly expanding population. A generation ago it stood at around 800 million. It’s now 1.3 billion. Yet it has an economy that shrugs off the soaring population and is set to become the third largest economy on the planet in around 15 years’ time. It has been growing at an average 7% of GDP since 2017 — nearly the fastest growing country in the world. And just to get the flavour of the place, over half the population — 54% as of 2019 — are
under the age of 30 and keen to tap into the economy’s rising strength. It’s a country of diverse languages. There are some 22 official languages that are used in India’s 29 states. It boasts the tallest mountains on earth in the north, the seventh largest desert in the world — in itself it’s the seventh largest country too — and extremes of weather rare to encounter elsewhere on the planet. In its dash for growth, parts of the country have leapfrogged existing technologies — mobile telephones are the norm for doing business, landlines are the exception, and India’s silicon valley hotspot in Bangalore is set to become the largest IT cluster on the planet, overtaking the US by 2020 in terms of IT professionals, jobs and exports. According to the latest World Bank annual ratings, India is ranked 77 among 190 world
India’s economy has been growing at an average 7% of GDP since 2017 — nearly the fastest growing country in the world.
18 • Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook
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INDIA — BUSINESS AND SOCIETY
economies in terms of ease of doing business. That may not sound impressive but it jumped an astonishing 23 places last year as the government eased up on the regulations to let the economy leap forward. But it’s also a traditional society in many ways. Although the caste system — the Jaati — in theory came to a legal end in 1950, the issue of economic discrimination against certain groups has continued to be a major political topic with government after government striving to create a more level playing field for its citizens. As a sign of the country’s advance a Dalit (more familiarly called an untouchable), Kocheril Raman Narayanan, became the country’s 10th president in 1997. One of the legacies of the Jaati is the existence of a highly structured and hierarchical way of running a business. There is a chain of command that permeates the responsibilities of a company’s employees that is rigid with the key figure being the boss. Put simply, while in Western organizations the boss is considered to be first among equals, in India the boss is at the top of the business pyramid and is expected to give explicit instructions, which must be followed to the letter. Micro-management is ever present in the workplace and initiative is discouraged if it contradicts the boss’s instructions. But don’t get the impression that Indian business is sluggish or necessarily inefficient because of this — there are more than 30,000 business start-ups in India, and this figure is growing at a rate of 6,000 per year. Back to relationships Building strong relationships is another fundamental foundation for doing business in the region. Relationships are placed before business and it is considered the most crucial stage of the business cycle. Despite the plethora of local languages, English is the language of politics and commerce. It is spoken near enough universally by the educated. Indians’ command of English is considered to be very high, making it unlikely to find a business person in India unable to converse in English. In Indian society it is considered bad manners to refuse or disagree as it could be con-
Since the 1950s the government has been untangling the caste system — something institutionalized by the former British rule over the country. One sign of the country’s progress is that a Dalit (more familiarly called an untouchable), Kocheril Raman Narayanan, became the country’s 10th president in 1997.
A generation ago India’s population stood at around 800 million. It’s now 1.3 billion. Yet its economy shrugs off its soaring population and is set to become the third largest economy on the planet in 20 years’ time.
Over half the population— 54% as of 2019 — is under the age of 30 and keen to tap into the economy’s rising strength.
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Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook • 19
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INDIA — BUSINESS AND SOCIETY
It is worth remembering that while the US has never had a female president, India had the first woman in the world in the top slot — Indira Ghandi, who first led the country from 1966 to 1977 sidered offensive. When faced with a disagreement, refusal is replaced with vagueness and lack of commitment. Consequently, in a business environment there is a danger that you will be told what people think you want to hear, rather than explicit truths. Although India is very much a male dominated culture, women are respected in positions of authority. While the majority of senior positions in India are still held by men, women have been climbing the corporate ladder from the economic liberalization that started in the early 1990s. In India, the rank of the individual overrules gender, meaning that it is the position that demands the respect. If a woman holds
the position of manager, her instructions will be followed just as thoroughly as those of her male counterpart. It is worth remembering that while the US has never had a female president, India had the first woman in the world in the top slot — Indira Ghandi was prime minister of the country from 1966 to 1977 and 1980 to 1984 and is remembered as being a strong and prescient leader. Business meetings in India vary as much as they do in the west but there are social norms to be followed. In line with India’s relationship-oriented society, meetings begin with non-business-focused matters. This is considered an important part of the cycle of business and shouldn’t be rushed. Many meetings in traditional Indian organizations will be informal, with interruptions or taking personal calls a regular occurrence. That said, Western-style business meetings with agendas, chairpersons and schedules are increasingly becoming the norm. Other social norms that are worth remembering include gift-giving, which is an endemic part of life in India and can help begin a prosperous business relationship. The choice of gift needs to be culturally sensitive — Muslims in India don’t drink alcohol, Hindus eschew leather and the normal guidance is that advice on the choice of gift is sensible. The recipients of the gift generally open the present later and in private. But whether you are the giver or the taker, the underlying sentiments are profound: respect, friendship and the desire to build a yet firmer relationship.
In line with India’s relationshiporiented society, meetings begin with non-businessfocused matters, which is considered an important part of the cycle of business and shouldn’t be rushed.
22 • Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook
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THE LEAD VERSUS LITHIUM BATTERY DEBATE
Back to basics Indian government policy may be betting that lithium will be the energy storage medium of the future. But elsewhere the lead battery industry is fighting back with products that are affordable and customizable to the demanding conditions of India’s roads and climate.
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t’s been one of the most abrupt turnarounds in the history of science. The lead battery — workhorse of the modern world for more than a century — has become the least favoured battery for the new and rapidly expanding world of energy storage systems. According to recent US Department of Energy figures lead acid batteries were used in just over 2% of new large scale energy storage deployments in the past year. A couple of years ago that figure stood at around 10%. Quite why this has happened is puzzling given that lead batteries continue to be the chemistry of choice for heavy duty energy storage such as large scale battery deployments in UPS and telecoms applications. There is no denying, however, that lithium ion batteries have many advantages over lead acid batteries. Their energy density is
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higher, they have superior performance in fast recycling. In particular, they are better suited in coping with some of the more sophisticated grid management functions — such as load levelling, frequency regulation and the like. These functions are nowadays more important than ever as utilities need to balance a grid that has to deal with the intermittency of renewables and the more subtle needs of the smarter grid.
According to recent US Department of Energy figures lead acid batteries were used in just over 2% of new large scale energy storage deployments in the past year. A couple of years ago that figure stood at around 10%.
Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook • 23
THE LEAD VERSUS LITHIUM BATTERY DEBATE
The idea of hybrid systems — mixing everything from flywheels and supercaps with lithium has been around for a long time. But lead batteries have stopped being a contender. I don’t really know why. It’s as if the whole industry has upped sticks and said any chemistry but lead. But what they gain in one direction they lose in another. “There’s a kind of blindness that’s overtaken our industry in the past couple of years,” says one systems integrator. “In that lead batteries can be used for the heavy lifting — cheap bulk energy storage is where it excels — while the higher grid functions can be dealt with using lithium. “Also some of the advanced lead batteries that are entering the market nowadays can compete with lithium for many of these higher grid functions. “The idea of hybrid systems — mixing everything from flywheels and supercaps with lithium has been around for a long time. But lead batteries have stopped being a contender. I don’t really know why. It’s as if the whole industry has upped sticks and said any chemistry but lead.” One only has to look at the Indian government’s thinking — as per India’s Energy Storage Mission — A Make-in-India Opportunity for Globally Competitive Battery Manufacturing — to see that policy makers are following the global herd rather than dealing with the facts about the expense of lithium or look at the way that advanced lead batteries are coming close to achieving the performance of lithium at a more competitive price, in a fashion that is recyclable and without fears of fire or explosion. Lead stands head and shoulders above every other chemistry in being the most affordable at around $150/kWh.
And, though lithium has made inroads in moving towards this figure, it still requires a leap of faith that it can prove as cost-effective within the next decade. But any realistic defence of lead needs to be judged on hard facts. And that is whether proven data from existing products can match up to large scale ESS requirements and some of the wilder predictions India is making over the cost of lithium per kWh. Bipolar — success at last On paper, bipolar offers a new way of constructing a lead-acid battery, one that has the potential to make batteries cheaper to manufacture, and more importantly deliver better performance than traditional lead-acid batteries or even lithium batteries in some applications. The key to realizing the technology’s potential lies in the biplate, specifically making it non-corrosive, lightweight, conductive and cheap. Several companies have tried to make a viable, marketable biplate, but so far the difficulty has always been taking the concept through to commercialization. But that is no longer the case. Two firms stand out at the moment — Advanced Battery Concepts (ABC), which has now a commercial line in operation, and Gridtential, which is close to commercialization of its product. Both firms have attracted investment from major lead battery firms in the US and abroad and the first mass-produced bi-polar batteries could be rolling off the factory production lines soon. The beauty of the bipolar product to Indian battery makers is that the alterations to the manufacturing line can be made at one point only in the assembly — there is no need to disrupt the entire process. Effectively this isn’t requiring expensive new technology
In a bipolar design, the current flow is extremely uniform across the active material. As a result, you have higher utilization of the active material or more energy. Additionally, the design is very suitable for thin layers so higher power can be achieved as well with much better charge acceptance. Ed Shaffer, CEO and co-founder of ABC
24 • Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook
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THE LEAD VERSUS LITHIUM BATTERY DEBATE
A new generation of energy storage products is about to be deployed across India. The country is well positioned to accept both lead and lithium into its future energy mix but a bolt-on process to existing lines. So why are big companies looking at bipolar? There are two reasons why the technology is important, says Ray Kubis, an industry veteran who, two years ago, became a director and latterly chairman of Gridtential. The first is the market demand for higher voltage products with unique capabilities. “Either it’s going to be lithium-ion or the deployment of bi-polar, because they are the only types of solutions that can offer the opportunity to scale up to higher voltage,” he says. The existing infrastructure of lead acid batteries is adaptable and well done at the 12V level. However, when non-bipolar (or monopolar) batteries are scaled up it is hard to reach the higher voltage demanded by new applications such as 48V systems for micro and mild-hybrid cars. Bipolar offers a viable, theoretical way for companies to achieve those demands. Gridtential has a sheet of silicon that replaces the traditional metal grid in current lead acid battery designs with a silicon substrate. Gridtential has various committed investors — Crown Battery, Leoch, Power-Sonic and East Penn from the battery community, and he Roda Group and 1955 Capital from the world of finance. These firms are still conducting trials of inserting the new technology into their existing lines. Elsewhere, ABC is pushing ahead with its
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GreenSeal product which is now being manufactured commercially. The key area where bipolar has the potential to trump legacy lead acid batteries is in the architecture of the battery. In a typical prismatic design, a grid is connected to the cast-on strap at the lug. This means the active material for a standard grid is being worked non-uniformly during cycling because the current flow is high near the lug, and low away from the lug. In a bipolar design, the current flow is extremely uniform across the active material. “As a result,” says Ed Shaffer, CEO and cofounder of ABC, “you have higher utilization of the active material or more energy. “Additionally, the design is very suitable for thin layers so higher power can be achieved as well with much better charge acceptance.”
Some claim lithium ion is a better investment at scale, yet you just need to look at the recalls within the industry along with the scale of new factory investments. If you invest $5 billion in a battery factory then have periodic recalls such as we’ve seen with cellphones, laptops, or with Boeing, what’s the return on investment then?
Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook • 25
WWW.HMNDGROUP.COM INNOVATION AWARD WINNER
THE LEAD VERSUS LITHIUM BATTERY DEBATE
The simplified construction and uniform current flow also results in higher cycle life, up to three times, ABC says, “as long as you can maintain the edge seal”. Interest in ABC has mounted over the past year. In January 2018 Exide Industries, the Indian battery giant, joined Johnson Controls, EnerSys and Trojan Battery Company in a licensee agreement. Since then Bulgarian headquartered Monbat, and US firm Crown Battery are part of the licensee group. The participation of firms such as Trojan is interesting in that its speciality has always been deep cycle batteries. Many in the lithium sector are unaware that Trojan, for example, offers a lead battery with a guaranteed 17 year life. This April ABC announced the creation of an industry alliance that included nonbattery manufacturing firms such as Wirtz, Digatron, Reko and Addenda. But it’s also worthwhile going back a year before the alliance was created. In April 2018, ABC announced it had chosen Wirtz Manufacturing to install production-scale paste lines for its prototype production facility. “This equipment will allow us to demonstrate run at rate throughput and assist our licensees in their adoption of our GreenSeal bipolar technology,” Shaffer said at the time. John Wirtz — who has also spent a lifetime working and designing battery manufacturing equipment — said: “ABC has been able to demonstrate precision pasting of bipolar electrodes repeatedly and successfully. Theirs is easily scalable, innovative, and simple. We look forward to the broad adoption by licensees of their bipolar lead battery technology.” In another endorsement, Bob Galyen, chief technology officer of China’s CATL (and the largest lithium cell producer in the world), became chairman in May that year of a technology advisory board set up by the company to help its development. Galyen, who has also been the president of NAATBatt, has a long history in the automotive battery sector and worked on the original General Motors EV1 project in the 1990s. He knows both lead and lithium well. From ABC’s perspective, the true benefit of its technology will be in the 20%-30% lower production costs based mostly on bill of materials reduction. “That is huge,” says Shaffer. Data from ABC shows that using its technology, a battery can reach three times the cycle life but with half the lead. “That means that every pound of lead mined can be used
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If you can reconfigure existing factories and the bipolar product coming out of that factory can compete with lithium ion, and at only 5%-10% of the capital outlay you would otherwise spend, then to me it makes sense to rapidly develop the alternative bipolar. six times longer… or put another way there is six times less lead needed for the same amount of energy. That is fantastic,” says Shaffer. Kubis believes that Gridtential’s bipolar construction helps improve active material utilization to breakthrough levels, while improving charge acceptance and life at Partial State-of Charge. Looking beyond regular lead The kind of performance changes demanded by users — especially if lead battery manufacturers can offer utilities and power companies the huge storage and energy management capabilities that they are purchasing from lithium suppliers — is why it’s important that companies improve their paste recipes and concurrently implement fundamental architecture changes, such as the bipolar architecture. This could yield advanced lead-based batteries with overall performance of three to four times that of legacy lead acid batteries. Our existing batteries are simply not good enough against the performance required by today’s demanding and growing range of applications, says Kubis. In many applications, where there is a need for very high power, such as in backup power for cloud computing or for frequency regulation for grid-scale services, bipolar batteries will work, says Kubis. However, with consumer electronics — or long duration, say four to eight hours where there’s a need for a steady energy release across a few hours and not high power — it is harder for advanced lead batteries to compete. But Kubis believes advanced bipolar batteries can compete across high power or mixed power/medium energy applications. Having better PSoC means the battery is a potential game changer in 48V systems. At the energy storage side of the market, Geoffrey May, principal of FOCUS Consulting, says bipolar’s future will probably lie in its ability to be used in domestic or small commercial installations.
In the past four years Hammond Group has made extraordinary progress in the development of expanders. It now has a range of 120 customizable expanders under a generic brand called SureCure.
Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook • 29
THE LEAD VERSUS LITHIUM BATTERY DEBATE
The beauty of the bipolar product to Indian battery makers is that the alterations to the manufacturing line can be made at one point only in the assembly — there is no need to disrupt the entire process. “At that end you’ll probably see systems with 48V modules bringing it up to a reasonable capacity because of the need for systems at domestic level to be a few kWh to start being viable,” he says. “Both 48V and energy storage systems are possible applications. If you look at ABC and the stage where they have got to — with data in the public domain — you can look at reasonable cell production within a few years.” The other factor is energy density, at around 38Wh/kg for legacy lead acid and the potential for bi-polar to reach 50Wh/kg-63Wh/kg. Theoretically the technology could double from these claimed levels today. Companies such as Gridtential know bipolar is going to beat traditional lead acid for energy density, but they have yet to validate that. “There’s talk about the very high theoretical capacity of advanced lead,” says Kubis. “Yet we believe we can realistically reach much higher than 50Wh/kg.” He thinks the timescale to achieving this target will be much smaller than five to 10 years because of the progress that his company’s partners have made. “We expect there will be products in the field from our manufacturing partners and investors by the end of this year and developing further in the next year.” A lot of alternative battery systems use unique new materials that come from smallscale industry but Kubis says Gridtential’s solution is integrating treated silicon wafers that comes from the high volume, low cost solar industry. And at higher volumes, they can see the cost of silicon they use dropping as low as lead at $1 per pound, while enabling the much higher performance concurrently with at least a third less weight. “In addition, to adapt Gridtential’s technology, you also don’t have to spend billions of dollars on a gigafactory, you only need to adapt the assembly process, and integrate a silicon biplate supply chain to change the factories from being able to manufacture traditional lead acid batteries to bipolar. You can continue with your existing oxide manufacture, curing and charging infrastructure,” says Kubis. “Some claim lithium ion is a better invest-
30 • Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook
ment at scale, yet you just need to look at the recalls within the industry along with the scale of new factory investments. If you invest $5 billion in a battery factory then have periodic recalls such as we’ve seen with cellphones, laptops, or with Boeing, what’s the return on investment then? “If you can reconfigure existing factories and the bipolar product coming out of that factory can compete with lithium ion, and at only 5%-10% of the capital outlay you would otherwise spend, then to me it makes sense to rapidly develop the alternative bipolar.” Kubis says existing battery manufacturers are under threat. “The lithium ion industry is coming out of China, Korea and Japan. If this trend were to continue then European, US and Indian battery makers will be reduced to being assemblers of cells.” “So bipolar offers the opportunity for the non-Asian battery industry to not become obsolete, and bipolar is a way to add value to your region and continue to offer a strong supply chain.” Paste glorious paste One of the critical phases in the development of a good lead acid battery is adding the lead paste to the grid. How it attaches — with the use of a so-called ‘expander’ — and the way crystal structures that develop form make a huge difference in battery performance. In the past four years Hammond Group has made extraordinary progress in the development of expanders. It now has a range of 120 customizable expanders under a generic brand called SureCure. “The nub of the problem between lead and lithium is mostly a question of price and recyclability,” says Terry Murphy, chief executive of Hammond, who has refocused the firm to concentrate on the battery sector. “For advanced energy storage lithium ion batteries meet most of the technical requirements, but are too expensive. By contrast lead acid batteries are inexpensive and 100% recyclable, but don’t have the necessary cycle life. The challenge has been to extend that life.” “SureCure expanders provide lead acid batteries with dramatically improved dynamic charge acceptance while our lab, which is open to the industry, is dedicated to all of our technical development. Its goal is to enable lead acid batteries to achieve 80% of lithium ion’s technical performance. But at just 20% of its cost,” says the firm. Dynamic charge acceptance — the way batteries can accept and rapidly store large
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THE LEAD VERSUS LITHIUM BATTERY DEBATE
influxes of energy — is the next big thing for the lead acid business. It opens up two worlds — that of microhybrids in the automotive sector and the huge new areas of business opening up with grid scale storage. In laboratory testing and now in production batteries, Hammond has achieved an order-of-magnitude increase in dynamic charge acceptance while simultaneously increasing cycle life show relative comparisons to our control samples. The innovation does not require a change in other battery paste ingredients, grids, or plates. No change in any other material component or process. No new tooling, production technique, distribution, use, scrap characterization, or recycling. SureCure represents a new expander family, with no safety concerns or known adverse effect, Moreover, SureCure is customizable according to the needs of the batteries being made and the operating conditions that they will run in. Perhaps one of the most interesting facets of Hammond’s new expander range is the fact that, for example, the extended cycle life that can be added to a battery can be multiplied when paired with say a bipolar battery. Enter the UltraBattery The UltraBattery is a hybrid, long-life leadacid energy storage device. It combines the fast charging rates of an ultracapacitor technology with the energy storage potential of a lead acid battery technology in a hybrid device with a single common electrolyte. Combining these two technologies in one cell means that UltraBattery works efficiently in a Partial State of Charge (PSoC). Compared with conventional VRLA batteries, UltraBattery provides more energy and costs less over its lifetime when used in variable power applications. The technology is more efficient, and is equally as safe and recyclable, as conventional lead batteries. Although this technology has been found in the advanced lead acid battery world has been around for the past five years, it is only now becoming commercially more available. Two firms make the battery — Ecoult, a subsidiary of East Penn Manufacturing, and Furukuwa Battery.
In May 2018, Ecoult signed a manufacturing agreement with Exide Industries, one of the top two battery firms in India, could change the face of the energy storage market in the country. UltraBattery technology is already successfully deployed in automotive and stationary energy applications. An Ecoult spokesperson said: “UltraBattery technology is well suited to a large number of industry sectors including: grid/ microgrid support, including frequency regulation, power quality, spinning reserve, energy shifting and demand management and smoothing and ramp-rate control (particularly for renewables); micro and medium HEVs; dual-use for data centres and buildings; diesel efficiencies; residential energy management; and other transportation (particularly railways). “We are excited about the possibilities for dual-use applications. These exploit UltraBattery’s ability to provide grid and UPS support in a single installation (ie selling grid support services while the grid is available, but switching to UPS for any grid-outage event). “The cost for such applications suggests that businesses such as data centres could gain an attractive return on their battery investment.” Other improvements There are at least three other mainstream directions that the lead market is moving in to earn the title of being considered as an advanced lead battery and a cheaper rival to lithium as an industry standard. Carbon additives Pioneering research carried out through the use of carbon additives in negative lead battery electrodes started well over a decade ago but a whole new generation of products is just emerging. The latest studies say the combination of a bipolar battery and carbon additives is an immensely powerful combination. Carbon additives as such don’t change the basic electrochemistry of the battery but they do increase specific power and reduce sulfation, the principal cause of lead battery failure. A good example of a new additive comes from Heraeus Battery Technology which
A good example of a new additive comes from Heraeus Battery Technology which launched its Porocarb carbon powders in late 2017. These, says the firm, increase charge acceptance by up to 20% and life cycle by 100%.
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Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook • 31
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THE LEAD VERSUS LITHIUM BATTERY DEBATE
The fact is that the battery world is going to be dominated by our soon-tobe-desperate need for energy storage that is affordable but can deliver all the benefits of high performance and cost effectiveness. All chemistries will have their place to play Andy Bush, ILA
launched its Porocarb carbon powders in late 2017. These, says the firm, increase charge acceptance by up to 20% and life cycle by 100%. “Porocarb is a product family of synthetic porous carbon powders tailored specifically for demanding electrochemical applications in which the needs for a designed porosity intersect good kinetic accessibility,” says the firm, which claims its product is the first conductive additive that ensures electronic connectivity within the electrode and enhances ionic conductivity. “Even at the highest levels of electrode compression and loading, Porocarb ascertains open pathways within the electrode that help with electrolyte supply and distribution during filling and operation. It enables advanced electrochemical systems that were previously not achievable using standard carbon conductive additives.” Developed in 2014, the additives have been tested with actual customer pilots, says the firm, and have demonstrated increased charge acceptance of up to 120%; faster recharging rates; increased cycle life of up to 100%, and nearly 50% greater capacity at deep-discharge operations for longer power supply.
34 • Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook
Separators A new generation of separators is emerging — the largest players at the moment are Daramic (see separate section_ and ENTEK, both of which have developed separators that allow lead batteries to be customized for use in varying climates and locations. Most importantly, however, this customization means that step changes in terms of greater cycle life are being achieved. TPPL Two lead battery firms in particular, EnerSys and Northstar ,have been pushing this technology further. Thin Plate Pure Lead batteries have a higher energy density, fast charging capabilities and eliminate topping up of the batteries. TPPL essentially is a simple idea though complicated to achieve. TPPL batteries have a manufacturing process to create thin plate pure lead (99.99%) grids that measure 1mm compared with the conventional 2mm-4mm plates. Using thin plates improves power density as more plates can be fitted into the same-sized cell. Using a stronger acid in the battery further enhances power density. TPPL also lowers energy consumption. EnerSys says it has measured up to a 40% reduction in the energy required to maintain a battery fully charged, compared to a traditional lead-calcium battery with the same power. Advanced TPPL batteries are virtually maintenance-free during their anticipated design life which contributes to their low total cost of ownership. Northstar says that one of its battery ranges has a design life of more than 15 years at 20°C. Moreover because of their advanced casings the batteries can withstand operating temperatures of -40°C to -65°C. The low self-discharge rates means that TPPL batteries also store well. Their shelf life is up to 24 months between refresh charges. The latest research work by the CBI — the Consortium for Battery Innovations which took over from the ALABC earlier this year — says it can see a clear pathway for yet higher energy densities for lead batteries. “It’s silly to contrast the world of energy storage as one where either lead or lithium will dominate,” says Andy Bush, head of the International Lead Association. “The fact is that the battery world is going to be dominated by our soon-to-be-desperate need for energy storage that is affordable but can deliver all the benefits of high performance and cost effectiveness. All chemistries will have their place to play”
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PROFILE: EXIDE INDUSTRIES
Next stop, the world Exide Industries is the dominant player in the duopoly of India’s battery market. Like its rival Amara Raja, it continues to show an inventive aggressiveness in expansion.
E
xide in one shape or form has been active in India’s battery market for over a century. Its origins go back to the days of the British Raj, when Chloride Electric Storage Company (India) was set up in 1916. With the advent of independence in 1947, the UK parent maintained its ownership but changed its name to Associated Battery Makers (Eastern). A number of name changes followed. ABM became Chloride in 1972, Chloride Industries in 1988 and finally in 1995, became Exide Industries. Exide separated from its UK-based parent, Chloride Group, in 1989, when it divested its ownership in favour of a group of Indian shareholders. Exide Industries has no connection with the US multinational battery firm Exide Technologies. The company, headquartered in Kolkata, manufactures the widest range of storage batteries in the world, from 2.5Ah to 20,400Ah capacity, covering the broadest spectrum of applications. Exide has various factories located across various states in the country — two in Maharashtra, two in West Bengal, two in Tamil Nadu, one in Haryana and two in Uttarakhand. It has two other plants that make home UPS systems. Its first manufacturing plant was in Shamnagar in Kolkata (where its R&D
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centre was established in 1976), the second was set up in Pune in 1969 and the third in Haldia, West Bengal. The Haldia plant is now the main focus for a huge expansion in the next couple of years. In 1997 Exide set up a fourth plant in Hosur, Tamil Nadu and the following year acquired the industrial/manufacturing units of Standard Batteries in Maharashtra state and Tamil Nadu and another plant in Maharashtra) from Cosepa Fiscal Industries. In India the company markets its products under the Exide, SF, Sonic and Standard Furukawa brands and supplies to all car and two-wheeler manufacturers. In the international market it sells products under the Dynex, Index and Sonic brands. Exide has a distribution network of 4,000 outlets, supported by four regional offices and 28 branch offices. It also exports batteries to the Middle East and CIS countries. It manufactures industrial batteries, which it sells under Exide, Index, SF, CEIL and Power Safe brands and in international
The company, headquartered in Kolkata, manufactures the widest range of storage batteries in the world, from 2.5Ah to 20,400Ah capacity, covering the broadest spectrum of applications.
Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook • 35
PROFILE: EXIDE INDUSTRIES
The new punched grid technology, as opposed to the older expanded metal technology, will catapult the industry to a new height in terms of product reliability and customer satisfaction. Gautam Chatterjee, CEO markets under the CEIL, Chloride and Index brands. Industrial batteries cater mostly to the infrastructure sector, such as railways, telecom, power plants, solar cells and other industrial segments including uninterrupted power supply, inverters and traction batteries. Exide also manufactures high-end submarine batteries. It is one of five companies in the world that can make submarine batteries for Russian and German types. It manufactures two to three submarine batteries a year for the Indian government. International positioning and expertise In the early 2000s the company positioned itself to be a regional Asian player with a global reach. It acquired a 100% stake in Chloride Batteries S E Asia Pte, in 2001, a 61.5% stake in Associated Battery Manufacturers Ceylon in 2004, 100% stake in Caldyne Automatics in July 2007 and Tandon Metals in October that year. In 2008 it acquired a
36 • Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook
51% stake in Leadage Alloys India, and in 2012 an inverter manufacturing facility in Uttarakhand. Moves outside the region include the acquisition of a 51% stake in UK–based ESPEX Batteries in 2003 and a wide range of technical collaborations that are increasingly active. One of the first of these was a technical collaboration with China’s Changxing Noble Power Sourcing China in 2008 for the manufacture of deep cycling batteries for electric bicycles and scooters. The firm was also involved in developing batteries for a variety of stop-start micro-hybrids. In January 2012 Exide entered into technical collaboration and assistance agreements with East Penn Manufacturing in the US. The relationship has been long and deep. Initially East Penn provided technical assistance and support for the manufacture of automotive motive power standby telecom UPS solar and traction batteries for Exide’s various plants in India. In February 2013 Exide entered into a new technical licence and assistance agreement with Shin Kobe Electric Machinery from Japan, to implement new manufacturing processes for automotive batteries. The objective was to make better quality automotive batteries at a lower price. Product capabilities Exide continues to push out its products, tailoring them specifically to advanced products. In June 2016 Exide Industries launched the Solarblitz range of batteries in Lucknow, targeting them at the solar markets of rural India, where power cuts are frequent and prolonged. The Solarblitz range of batteries are specially designed for solar applications. That same year, and with bulk energy storage a major priority in the country, Exide signed two technical collaboration agreements during the year with East Penn for UltraBattery technology for stationary industrial applications. The UltraBattery — a lead acid battery with an ultra capacitor as an electrode — offers extended cycle life at a partial state of charge. This collaboration with East Penn, and an associated investment of Rs700 crore, helped result in a new state-ofthe-art battery making plant at the Haldia West Bengal factory. It was inaugurated in January 2017.
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PROFILE: EXIDE INDUSTRIES
WHAT’S IN A NAME? In June 2018 Exide Industries signed an agreement to buy a closed-down factory belonging to lead acid battery manufacturer Tudor India, the Indian arm of the US company Exide Technologies. In May 2017, the Indian firm settled an argument with Exide Technologies over the use of the Exide trademark in India. After 19 years of legal tussles, the US firm finally gave up its claim to the trademark. The sale of the factory marks the end of the US firm’s production in India.
FINANCIAL PERSPECTIVE Exide is the largest lead acid battery manufacturer in India with leadership in the auto OEM and replacement segment. But, between financial years 2013-2017, Exide clocked a net sales/profit after tax of 5.9% and CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 7.3%. This was lower than its competitor Amara Raja’s profit after tax of 15.9% and CAGR of 13.1%. Exide’s growth in the last few years has remained subdued compared with Amara Raja’s due to the latter’s technological innovations (first to introduce maintenancefree, factory charged, extended warranty batteries), and unique distribution model (franchisee-based), supported by operational efficiency-led competitive pricing. Ind However, since May 2016, when Gautam Chatterjee took over as MD & CEO of Exide, the company has adopted several initiatives at market and product quality level. These initiatives are now reflected in market share recovery, product quality improvement and recovery in margins. Exide is on track to reduce the performance gap vis-à-vis its peers such as Amara Raja. Source: Motilal Oswal research note
Part of the aim of the upgrade was to automate production and Exide introduced punched grid technology from East Penn in the assembly process. “The new punched grid technology, as opposed to the older expanded metal technology, will catapult the industry to a new height in terms of product reliability and customer satisfaction,” Gautam Chatterjee, Exide’s CEO said at the time. Exide was the first battery manufacturer in India to use East Penn’s technology, which is carried out by robots to eliminate inconsistencies between different units of batteries. The technology also increases battery life by 20%. These batteries will be sold at a premium under a new sub-brand. The expansion will increase Exide’s annual production of around 34 million automobile batteries by 15 million batteries, the firm said. In early 2018 Advanced Battery Concepts, the lead bipolar company, announced that it had agreed a fourth licensing agreement, this time with Exide. ABC says the technology simplifies lead battery manufacturing and improves performance by increasing cycle life, reducing weight and reducing charge time because of the 46% lower lead metal content in the battery. It is also recyclable In August 2018 Exide partnered Japan’s Furukuwa Battery, another pioneer of the UltraBattery, that allows it to make and sell the product for Indian car makers. The sub-licence agreement includes a contract for Furukawa to provide technical assistance to Exide, with which it has had a technological alliance since the mid-2000s, the company said.
EXIDE INDUSTRIES: RECENT QUARTERLY PERFORMANCE Financial year end March 31 (Rs million) Net sales Growth YoY (%) EBITDA EBITDA margin (%) Profit before tax Tax Effective tax rate (%) Adjusted profits after tax Change (%)
FY18
FY19
FY18 FY19E
1Q 2Q 3Q 4Q 1Q 2Q 3Q 4QE 21,029
23,584
22,783
24,594
27,725
27,204
24,968
28,002
91,863
107,898
4.6
22.5
32.8
25.8
31.8
15.3
9.6
13.9
21.1
17.5
3,243
2,959
2,826
3,380
3,909
3,327
3,125
3,713
12,408
14,075
15.4
12.5
12.4
13.7
14.1
12.2
12.5
13.3
13.5
13.0
2,796
2,061
2,302
2,903
3,221
3,745
2,369
2,970
10,062
12,305
906
706
759
1,007
1,122
1,060
818
974
3,378
3,974
32.4
34.3
33.0
34.7
34.8
28.3
34.5
32.8
33.6
32.3
1,890
1,630
1,543
1,896
2,099
1,908
1,550
1,997
6,961
7,597
-3.6
-10.3
1.8
15.4
11.1
17.0
0.5
5.3
0.4
9.1
E= estimate
38 • Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook
Source: Motilal Oswal
www.batteriesinternational.com
PROFILE: EXIDE INDUSTRIES
“Furukawa Battery is providing Exide with technologies to produce highquality, long-life lead-acid batteries. By doing so, Furukawa Battery will support the upgrading of Exide’s batteries and the expansion of its product line-up,” a company statement said. Exide plans to move into the production of high-end nickel batteries in technical collaboration with Furukuwa. The batteries are used in applications for bullet trains, metro rail and other critical installations. Technical assistance contracts were made between the two companies in 2005 for automotive batteries, in 2007 for valveregulated lead batteries for motorcycles, and in 2012 for stop-start batteries. As a result of these investments and collaboration, in January 2018 Exide launched its Epiq brand. The battery comes with a six-year warranty — the highest in the Indian market. Later in the year the company entered into technical collaboration with Moura, the Brazilian battery maker. In recent years Exide has explored the possibility of making lithium ion batteries. This started with a technology cooperation agreement with China’s Chaowei Group, which started in the 2016/2017 financial year. At the end of August last year, it signed a joint venture with Swiss firm Leclanché to create a production facility in Gujarat. Initially the plant, which should come on line before this summer, will assemble cells from Leclanché’s facility in Willstätt, Germany before domestic cell production starts in mid-2020. Exide is the majority shareholder in the JV. India has announced it intends to produce and sell only electric vehicles by 2030 in its push to reduce the country’s dependence on oil. In November 2018 Exide launched a new range of UPS batteries especially for the home and small office market. The Power NXT lead acid batteries work across a wide range of applications for SOHO (small office/home office) users and other small businesses such as diagnostic centres. According to the 2017 report WorkIndia by Regus, a global provider of workspace products, around 62% of business people in India work 2-1/2 or more days a week remotely. Exide continues to address all aspects of the lead battery manufacturing chain. Last August it announced a variety of plans to
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Arun Mittal, Exide director of industrial, launching The Power NXT range. invest more than Rs5.5 billion ($78 million) in creating new facilities at its existing plant in West Bengal. This will make it one of the biggest battery-making centres in south-east Asia. The work should be near completion by the start of 2020. Some 20 acres of the new development will be devoted to a new battery recycling plant. Media reports say this will be the country’s largest battery recycling plant, with a monthly capacity of 15,000 tonnes. It will involve a technical tie-up with Italy’s Engitec Technologies. The company already has two scrap battery recycling units, at Pune and Bengaluru. The Haldia unit would take around 12-15 months for the unit to be operational. The company’s lead recycling operations are carried out by its subsidiary Chloride Metals. Chloride Metals was created in March 2016 through a merger of two of Exide’s wholly owned subsidiaries Chloride Metals and Chloride Alloys. Separately, in January 2013, Exide Industries acquired 100% of the equity capital of ING Vysya Life Insurance, which was later changed to Exide Life Insurance Company.
Some 20 acres of the new development will be devoted to a new battery recycling plant. Media reports say this will be the country’s largest battery recycling plant with a monthly capacity of 15,000 tonnes.
Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook • 39
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PROFILE: AMARA RAJA
The rise and rise of Amara Raja Amara Raja is the second largest battery manufacturer in India but in little more than a generation it has grown from a start-up to a giant.
E
ven the biggest battery firms have to start somewhere. And for industrial battery giant Amara Raja, its story began when its founder, Ramachandra Gall — pictured right — returned to his homeland in India in 1984. After completing a masters degree in India, Galla took a second masters in engineering in Michigan State University before starting a successful career in the US working for legendary power design company Sargent and Lundy. There he was responsible for designing complex electrical power designs for thermal and nuclear plants. Aged just 36, Galla’s return to India couldn’t have happened at a more opportune time. Economic growth, inspired in part by premier Indira Ghandi’s attempts to free up markets and ease controls, pushed GDP growth for the 1980s decade above 5% a year. In February 1985 Galla set up two firms in his home district of Chittoor in Andhra Pradesh — Amara Raja Power Systems and Amara Raja Batteries. The choice of the name was a sentimental one — Galla’s grandparents were Amaravati and Rajagopal Naidu. The firms were small at first, initially with just 12 employees, but grew rapidly. In 1989 the firm set up its industrial battery division, a mainstay of its business, but perhaps the most critical year in the firm’s development was in 1997, when it received ISO9001 certification. This paved the way for a joint venture with Johnson Controls in December that year. Johnson is the world’s largest manufacturer of automotive batteries, and in 2001 the first batteries rolled off the manufacturing line. It was the first time that Amara Raja had challenged Exide Industries, the number one leader in the automotive sector, with all guns blazing. Amara Raja, which is a publicly quoted company and listed on the SEX, is 26%
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owned by the Galla family and 26% by Johnson Controls. JCI took up its present stake in 1997. Today the Amara Raja group — the first two firms had various spin-offs into other companies — employs a workforce of more than 14,000 people, working for six companies and 14 business sectors. From its roots in a remote village called Karakambadi in Chittoor it is now headquartered in Hyderabad, reckoned to be the pharmaceutical and biotech centre of India. Amara Raja is best known as the manufacturer of automotive batteries and home UPS/inverter batteries under the brands Amaron and PowerZone, which are
Amara Raja is best known as the manufacturer of automotive batteries and home UPS/ inverter batteries under the brands Amaron and PowerZone, which are distributed through a pan-India sales and service retail network.
Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook • 41
PROFILE: AMARA RAJA
The firm is gearing up to be a leader through consolidating in existing areas, entering new business opportunities within the battery space — mainly home UPS, solar and motive power and aided by capacity and network expansion. distributed through a pan-India sales and service retail network. Amara Raja Batteries supplies automotive batteries under OE relationships to Ford India, Honda, Hyundai, Mahindra & Mahindra, Maruti Suzuki, Ashok Leyland, and Tata Motors, Honda Motorcycles & Scooters India Private, Royal Enfield and Bajaj Auto, among others. Amara Raja Batteries is also the leading private label supplier for prominent brands. In India, Amara Raja Batteries is the preferred supplier to major telecom service providers, telecom equipment manufacturers, the UPS sector, Indian Railways and to a variety of other industry segments. Amara Raja’s Industrial Battery Division produces brands such as PowerStack, Amaron Volt, Amaron Sleek, Amaron Volt Amaron Brute and Amaron Quanta. In 2019 the firm said it had set up a bipolar battery division. Competitive position There are two key lead acid players in the Indian battery market — Exide Industries and Amara Raja. This duopoly leaves the historically longer established Exide the larger player of the two, but not in all sectors. Amara now beats Exide in the telecom sector — with around a 55% share — and around 34% in the UPS market.
According to market analysis from Motilal Oswal, between the financial years of 2004 to 2016 Amara Raja enjoyed a compound annual growth of 34% and after-tax profits of 68% in net sales. This contrasts with Exide’s 20% for each. “This has been driven through a combination of technological innovations (first to introduce maintenance-free, factory charged, extended warranty batteries), witty advertising and unique distribution model (franchisee based) supported with operational efficiency-led competitive pricing,” says Motilal Oswal analyst Janish Ghandi in a research note. Ghandi says the firm is gearing up to be a leader through consolidating in existing areas, entering new business opportunities within the battery space — mainly home UPS, solar and motive power and aided by capacity and network expansion. In the telecom segment, he expects the firm to maintain its market share at current levels for the 2019 financial year. Recent moves Amara Raja continues to brace itself for a boom in lead batteries. Two initiatives last October suggested new directions that the firm was going in. The firm confirmed its expansion plans were continuing and it is in the process of setting up another car battery plant in the Andhra Pradesh Corridor, the same district as its existing plants. A budget of Rs700 crore ($95 million) has been earmarked for the plant, which has a projected capacity of 6.5 million units in a first phase. Eventually the capacity will reach 10.8 million units, making it one of the largest
AMARA RAJA: RECENT QUARTERLY PERFORMANCE Financial year end March 31 (Rs million) Net sales YoY change (%) EBITDA EBITDA margin (%) Profit before tax
FY18
FY19
FY18 FY19E
1Q 2Q 3Q 4Q 1Q 2Q 3Q 4QE 14,975
14,275
15,535
15,807
17,787
17,531
16,947
16,901
60,592
14.5
7.1
17.1
17.6
18.8
22.8
9.1
6.9
14.0
69,165 14.2
1,929
2,381
2,416
2,107
2,203
2,366
2,528
2,426
8,832
9,522
12.9
16.7
15.6
13.3
12.4
13.5
14.9
14.4
14.6
13.8
1,508
1,907
1,985
1,743
1,695
1,848
1,978
1,881
7,142
7,403
Tax rate (%)
33.7
33.3
32.3
37.0
33.3
34.9
33.8
33.9
34.0
34.0
Adjusted profits after tax
999
1,272
1,345
1,098
1,130
1,202
1,309
1,244
4,713
4,886
-23.6
-6.7
19.7
10.7
13.2
-5.5
-2.6
13.3
-1.5
3.7
YoY change (%) E= estimate
42 • Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook
Source: Motilal Oswal
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PROFILE: AMARA RAJA
The automotive sector, smart cities, digital India program, shift towards data-driven telecom services, solar power projects etc will lead to a surge in demand for lead-acid batteries in India. facilities of its kind in India, the company says. The existing car battery plants already make batteries for four and two-wheelers, as well as LVRLAs — large valve-regulated lead acid batteries. Although in its 2017-2018 annual report Amara Raja mentioned the importance of lithium-ion batteries and their advantages over lead acid, the company also forecast a compound annual growth rate of 8.36% up to 2022 for its core lead acid technology. “Two-wheelers are among the largest user of SLI batteries and the automotive segment contributes in excess of 60% of the total turnover of the Indian lead acid battery market,” the report says. “The automotive sector, smart cities, digital India program, shift towards data-driven telecom services, solar power projects etc will lead to a surge in demand for lead-acid batteries in India.” Earlier in October, Johnson Controls and
44 • Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook
Amara Raja signed an agreement aiming to bring new battery technologies to India. While the two firms have already worked closely together for more than two decades, the new pact will share product design and manufacturing technologies for SLI, EFB and AGM batteries, a statement said. Amara Raja has licensed Johnson Controls’ PowerFrame grid technology, which JCI claims is critical for meeting requirements dictated by the ‘Bharat VI norms’, which will go into effect in 2020. (These are emission control standards on fuel introduced in 2000 in India, based on European standards which limit the amount of sulfur in petrol and diesel to 10 parts per million.) Manufacturing the PowerFrame grid, which JCI says is 66% more corrosion resistant than other battery grids, uses 20% less energy and releases 20% fewer greenhouse gases than other manufacturing methods, and is thus more environmentally friendly. Marc Andraca, who is vice president of strategy and business development with JCI, and the Johnson Controls lead upon the Amara Raja board of directors, said: “This provides both our organizations with a powerful platform to introduce leading advanced lead-acid battery technologies and accelerate Amara Raja’s drive to achieve undisputed leadership across the dynamic Indian automotive battery market.” The firm announced on its website that this February it was expanding its production lines to include bipolar batteries. It also continues to consolidate its lead supply and last May signed a deal with Gravita India, the lead recycling firm, for Gravita to collect and buy lead acid battery scrap from designated Amara Raja sites, process the materials into lead and lead alloys and then supply them back to Amara Raja. Gravita aims to supply 8,000 tonnes of lead a year. International expansion too In July 2018 the firm set up Amara Raja Batteries Middle East, a wholly owned subsidiary, at Sharjah Airport International Free Zone in the United Arab Emirates. In its regulatory filing said it had an authorised share capital of AED150,000 ($41,000). The expansion at home and internationally reflects a growing optimism about the state of the Indian economy. The IMF predicted in that India will be the fastest growing major economy in 2018, with a growth rate of 7.4%. Next year it is forecasting 7.8%.
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PROFILE: AMARA RAJA
The Indian business press says Amara Raja Group is consolidating the group holdings across the various companies under a newly formed holding entity, RN Galla Family Pvt Ltd. A corporate structure for the holding entity, which so far was a partnership firm, is being created by the demerger of Amara Raja Electronics, to which group’s shareholding
of listed entity Amara Raja Batteries has been transferred. Amara Raja Electronics Pvt Ltd, a promoter-held company that manufactures products like digital inverters, battery chargers and converters is being demerged to carve out two resulting companies, RN Galla Family Pvt Ltd, the group holding company, and Amara Raja Power Systems.
AMARA RAJA BATTERIES — THE HISTORY • Amara Raja Batteries Ltd was incorporated in February 1985 as a private limited company • Amara Raja’s industrial battery brands: PowerStack, AmaronVoltTM and Quanta.
• March 2009 a deal with Tata International for export of automotive batteries under the Amaron brand in African markets.
• The company is a leading manufacturer of automotive batteries under the brands Amaron and Powerzone.
• December 2010 the company unveiled Amaron Volt Hi-Life batteries for critical industrial applications and the Amaron Sleek batteries for industrial applications.
• The company supplies automotive batteries to Ashok Leyland, Ford India, Honda, Hyundai, Mahindra & Mahindra, Maruti Suzuki and Tata Motors.
• May 2012 proposal approved to sub-divide the equity shares of the company from the present face value of Rs 2 each to Rs 1 each.
• The Galla Family and Johnson Controls hold 26% stake each in Amara Raja Batteries.
• 2013, Amara Raja Batteries approved capex of Rs 440 crore to augment manufacturing capacities of large VRLA and four-wheeler batteries.
• Johnson Controls is a global diversified technology and multi industrial leader serving a wide range of customers in more than 150 countries. • May 1992, Amara Raja designed and implemented the most advanced battery manufacturing facility in India. • December 1997, it signed a joint venture agreement with Johnson Controls Inc USA for the import of technology for the manufacture of Automotive SLI (starting, lighting, ignition) batteries.
• June 2013 Amara Raja Batteries’ automotive batteries division commenced supplies of twowheeler batteries to Honda Motors India Limited for its plant in Karnataka. • January 2014 the company commissioned the modern and fully integrated MVRLA battery plant in a new location at Chittoor Andhra Pradesh. • November 2014 an investment of Rs 500 crore to set up a tubular batteries manufacturing plant with a capacity of 1.44 million units p.a.
• In the years 2000 to 2004 the company launched: Amaron automotive batteries, Quanta UPS Amkaron Hiway and Harvest batteries, Amaron PRO GO and FRESH automotive batteries.
• April 2015, its four-wheeler automotive battery plant at Nunegundlapalle village Bangarupalyam Mandal Chittoor District (Unit II) opened with a capacity of 2.25 million units p.a.
• 2007-08, the company increased the capacity of its automotive battery plant from 3.6 million units to 4.9 million units, which includes additional capacity created in monobloc valve-regulated lead-acid (VRLA) batteries.
• Two-wheeler battery capacity to be increased from 11 million units p.a to 25 million units p.a.
• May 2008 the company entered the two-wheeler battery market with the launch of Amaron Pro Bike Rider two-wheeler batteries powered by VRLA technology.
• June 2016 the company started selling tubular batteries.
• February 2009, a deal was signed with car maker Maruti Suzuki India for retailing Amaron MGB (Maruti Genuine Battery) through Maruti Authorized service centres.
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• March 2016, expansion of four-wheeler battery capacity from 8.25 million units p.a to 11 million units p.a.
• September 2017 the company introduced Amaron Brute Hi-Life batteries for motive power application to address a growing market segment. • On 19 December 2017 Amara Raja Batteries commissioned its two-wheeler battery plant at the Amara Raja Growth Corridor in Chittoor Andhra Pradesh with an eventual annual 29 million battery capacity.
Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook • 45
KEY FACTS, INDIAN LEAD
Lead glorious lead — the basics in India • India is the second largest lead producer in Asia and among the top seven globally. China is the largest producer of lead, followed by Australia. • India is endowed with large resources of lead ores, the occurrence of lead and zinc ore are distributed over three major regions — Bhilwara, Rajsamand district and Udaipur district. Rajasthan has the largest resources — 90% of the total in the country. • Around 76% of the lead consumed in the country is used for manufacturing lead batteries. Of this around 60% goes to the automobile sector and the rest goes to other users of batteries such as UPS, inverters and the telecoms sector. • Vedanta Resources Limited is the largest mining and non-ferrous metals company in India and the only primary lead producer in India. • There are more than 600 registered recyclers. • There is an unknown quantity of unregistered and back yard smelters operating both illegally and damaging people’s lives and the environment. • The lead battery industry in India is scattered all across the country . • Local taxation laws, transport costs and subsidiaries play a major role in deciding the location, capacity and technology used by lead producers. • As of 2018, India lead production is 1,085,000 tonnes and has an estimated market size of $3 billion. Of this 250,000 tonnes is imported in terms of lead scrap and finished products. • Primary lead production stood at 150,000 tonnes in 2018. • Secondary lead production stood at 850,000 tonnes in 2018 of which roughly half comes from the informal sector. • India exports 85,000 tonnes of lead annually. • The lead battery industry in India is forecast by various research houses to grow at around 7%-9% CAGR (compound annual growth rate). • The current lead acid battery market is valued around $5 billion. • The growth in the industry will come from automobiles, telecom infrastructure, renewable energy (wind and solar) and from e-bikes and e-rickshaws.
46 • Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook
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LITHIUM BATTERY MANUFACTURING
Firms line up to build gigafactories in India India is being swept up in the race to adopt lithium batteries. The next step is to move away from its tentative moves in assembling lithium battery packs to manufacturing them domestically.
A
s governments across the world set their own dates to ban sales of new internal combustion engine vehicles, the race is heating up to supply all the lithium batteries the new electric vehicles are going to need. Nowhere else is more caught up in the frenzy to make batteries than India, which has set its own date of 2030 to sell only electric vehicles — by which date, according to the United Nations, its population will have exceeded China’s and number more than 1.4 billion people. You don’t need to have a maths degree to work out that if a fraction of that number owns an EV, a lot of batteries will be required. The Indian government is promoting electric vehicles and lithium batteries, and under the FAME-II scheme cuts the Goods and Service Tax on lithium batteries from 28% to 18%. The tax cut does not apply to lead batteries. Companies — also following the government’s Make in India initiative — have been quick to lay down plans to capitalize on this by building plants rather than relying on imports. According to the Economic Times of India, Exide Industries, Exicom, Amaron, Greenfuel Energy Solutions, Trontek, Coslight India, Napino Auto & Electronics, Amara Raja, Trinity Energy Systems and Versatile Auto Components have all revealed plans to make their own lithium batteries. India’s largest battery maker, Exide Industries, signed a joint venture with Swiss lithium battery maker Leclanché in June last year to add the chemistry to its portfolio. A plant is scheduled to begin operating next year.
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CEO and managing director Gautam Chatterjee told Batteries International at the time that the firm was responding to Indian government policies. “Since the government is focusing on the electric vehicle industry we thought to stay relevant we should go into this,” he said. “We were looking for a company to help develop this and chose Leclanché to work with. Initially it will be limited to buses and two and three wheelers, but gradually this will expand and include all kinds of cars. “The JV will focus on e-transport,
Every battery purchased will reduce oil imports for many years to come, improving future years’ trade balance and reducing India’s exposure to oil price shocks
Annual and cumulative battery requirements to meet India’s EV ambitions
Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook • 47
LITHIUM BATTERY MANUFACTURING
FORMING A LITHIUM SUPPLY CHAIN
While the initial National Energy Storage Mission thinking was almost entirely focused on EVs, this later changed to include stationary power
In April India and Bolivia announced that they had signed a Memorandum of Understanding for the development and industrial use of lithium for the production of lithiumion batteries. The reasoning is simple: lithium is not mined in India, giving another twist to the Make in India initiative. But if lithium cells are to be made in the country, as opposed to being shipped in and assembled into battery packs (which has started to happen), a supply chain needs to be put in place. India, as the second largest manufacturer of mobile phones in the world, and with the goal of reaching 30% electric vehicle penetration by 2030, imports almost all its lithium-ion batteries. India is heavily dependent on China, Taiwan and Japan for imports, especially of batteries required for portable electronics. China is the biggest global consumer of lithium, and a Chinese consortium has recently signed a JV with Bolivia. Bolivia will support supplies of lithium and lithium carbonate to India. There will also be joint ventures between the two countries for lithium battery production plants in India. Bolivia holds more than 60% of the world’s reserves of lithium.
stationary energy storage systems and speciality storage markets. In e-transport, the target segment is fleet vehicles including e-buses, e-wheelers and e-rickshaws.” The JV will also provide energy storage systems for India’s EV market and gridbased applications. When it comes to the race to build India’s first so-called gigafactory — a term coined by Tesla’s Elon Musk, whose own plant in Nevada is just 30% completed yet is nevertheless the highest volume battery
plant in the world — a number of firms are in talks. Final discussions have begun on the first to come into the spotlight, a collaboration between the Indian government majorityowned Bharat Heavy Electricals and a consortium called Libcoin, which includes Sydney-based Magnis Energy, the Duggal Family Trust and lithium-ion battery specialist Charge CCCV. The initial plant will have a capacity of 1GWh but this will be scaled up to 30GWh,
Lithium-ion battery market: forecasts in US$ billion, by application, India, 2017-2023
48 • Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook
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LITHIUM BATTERY MANUFACTURING
LITHIUM POLICY DEVELOPMENT Government thinking is nowadays very much on the lines that the move into manufacturing lithium cells rather than assembling battery packs is the next step forward. But its initial thoughts were of dipping its toe into the world of lithium ion batteries. According to the National Energy Storage Mission report in late 2017, while India does not have the capacity to begin mass producing lithium-ion cells in the short term, it could take advantage of its strengths in manufacturing and assembly to capture significant value in the battery supply chain. Lithium-ion cells could be imported from competing vendors, all subject to strict quality requirements to ensure durability and safety, while battery pack assembly and programming would take place domestically. Historically, cell value has decreased faster with volume than battery pack value, offering India a long-term, valuable industrial opportunity. Early electric vehicle contracts for India, like Tata’s electric buses, imported fully assembled battery packs from foreign countries. Yet Indian companies from around 2017 began to recognize that importing a fully assembled battery pack is simply adding a middle man into the EV value chain. India has a very strong industrial labour market for technical assembly and programming — the two essential components of battery pack assembly. According to a government report, importing a fully assembled battery pack (assumed at $200/kWh during initial stages) is forfeiting $50/kWh-$80/kWh that could have otherwise been kept in India. “Importing the lithium-ion cells, in which India does not yet have market advantage, and then assembling packs domestically is the best way to maximize revenue and minimize costs during initial stages. “The estimated 120 GWh of cumulative demand during 2017–2020 would cost $24 billion in imported packs if a domestic industry were not developed, whereas assembling the packs in-country would require $15 billion-$18 billion in imported cells, while developing a $6 billion-$9 billion pack assembly industry in India.” The National Energy Storage Mission was debated throughout 2018, and in mid-March this year a cabinet meeting approved a variation on this, the National Mission on Transformative Mobility and Battery Storage. While the initial National Energy Storage Mission thinking was almost entirely focused on EVs, this later changed to include stationary power. But the initial deliberations followed the ‘Make in India’ concept, trying to free the country from its dependence on foreign oil imports. “Batteries are a one-time upfront investment for EVs, serving as an asset (with potential for additional revenue streams through secondary use in stationary applications in India) and contrasting with ongoing operating expenses for fuel needed for petrol or diesel vehicles. “Every battery purchased will reduce oil imports for many years to come, improving future years’ trade balance and reducing India’s exposure to oil price shocks,” said the report.
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“Our plan is to be the largest lithium-ion battery manufacturer in India, and we aim to be the first mover in one of the world’s largest markets” rivalling the Tesla plant. Press reports quoted Libcoin chairman Rajan Duggal stating his intention: “Our plan is to be the largest lithium-ion battery manufacturer in India, and we aim to be the first mover in one of the world’s largest markets. The interest this project is generating, especially in the Indian automobile sector, is very exciting.” “We see India as one of the largest markets in the world for lithium-ion batteries and to potentially build one of the world’s largest lithium-ion battery gigafactories with a partner who possesses the skill and expertise of BHEL is exciting for the company,” said Magnis chairman Frank Poullas. Another firm in the gigafactory race is Munoth Industries, which is to spend Rs799 crore ($115 million) on a plant in Andhra Pradesh, investing 165 crore in an initial phase but ultimately producing 1 million Ah of lithium batteries every day. The plant will reach full operation by 2022, the company said. Japanese motorbike maker Suzuki has formed an alliance with Toshiba and Denso to set up the firm’s first lithium battery manufacturing plant in Gujarat for a spend of Rs1,150 crore. Maruti Suzuki aims to launch an affordable electric vehicle by 2020, and is evaluating the technology in Wagon EVs in parts of the country. Automaker Mahindra & Mahindra announced in February 2018 that it had forged an alliance with South Korea’s LG Chem to make lithium batteries in India specifically for domestic EVs. Hemant Sikka, president and chief purchase officer at Mahindra, said the move would give Mahindra access to advanced battery technology. “The electric vehicle revolution is taking the country by storm and at Mahindra we are happy to be at the forefront of this change,” he said. “At Mahindra we are preparing to scale up in accordance with our expansion plans to meet demand expected in the near future.”
Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook • 49
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RAHUL WALAWALKAR, PRESIDENT OF INDIA ENERGY STORAGE ALLIANCE AND CES INDIA
The making of a better grid infrastructure Rahul Walawalkar, president of India Energy Storage Alliance and CES India, talks to Batteries International about keeping the lights on.
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n the last two days of July 2012, up to 700 million people across the north of India, including the capital New Delhi, were plunged into darkness. The UK’s Guardian newspaper said it was the world’s worst blackout of recent times, with 20 of India’s 28 states hit by power cuts. The New York Times called it the largest electrical blackout in history, affecting what amounted to 10% of the world’s population. “The power failure caused havoc, with whole cities grinding to a halt and transport and other services badly hit,” said a BBC report. According to an Indian government report of the crisis, eight states were affected on July 30 and 21 the following day. And it was all down to the failure of the NEW Grid, which comprises the northern, western, eastern and north-eastern grids. Underlying causes listed in the government report included skewed load generation across regional grids, lack of primary response from generators, inadequate dynamic reactive reserves, and the impact of the monsoon, which resulted in the northern region drawing huge loads of power from its neighbouring western and eastern grids. All power was restored by mid-afternoon on July 31, the government report said, but not until railways, the metro, mines and airports had been forced to shut down and people were forced to sweat without air conditioners in the country’s notorious seasonal humidity. Fortunately hospitals and other emergency facilities had largely been able to rely on back-up diesel generators, the report said. Rahul Walawalkar, president of the India Energy Storage Alliance and CES (Customized Energy Solutions) India, says the power cut was instrumental for change. He told Batteries International it was the power failures that prompted calls to set up a framework to take care of power quality and grid security and stability — and so the
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Rahul Walawalkar, president of India Energy Storage Alliance and CES India India Energy Storage Alliance was born. CES is an energy consulting and services company that has had its head office in Pennsylvania, US for 20 years. It works with more than 850 clients across “the value chain of the electricity industry” globally, and says it focuses on “empowering our clients by sharing our understanding of the workings of the energy markets and related new technologies and supporting our clients’ operations in those markets”. Walawalkar was also made chairman of the Global Energy Storage Alliance, of which IESA is a member, in November. “At the time of the power failures, there was little awareness of advanced energy
The New York Times called it the largest electrical blackout in history, affecting what amounted to 10% of the world’s population.
Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook • 51
RAHUL WALAWALKAR, PRESIDENT OF INDIA ENERGY STORAGE ALLIANCE AND CES INDIA
I would say overall we have achieved the key objective and now we are looking at the next five years with renewed interest and with some new ambitions as well. storage technologies and their applications among industry and policy makers in India,” says Walawalkar. “Energy storage policy changes have taken decade-long efforts in developed countries such as the US. In India over the past six years we have worked diligently to create awareness about energy storage technologies, business models and policies.” Walawalkar cites Satish Agnihotri, former secretary of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, who, Walawalkar says, recognized the importance in 2014, and created an energy storage standing committee at MNRE (Ministry of New and Renewable Energy), which began some of the preparatory work on policy with energy storage and microgrids. Based on that work, a roadmap was drafted and a series of pilot projects identified in 2016-2017. Detailed consultations were carried out with stakeholders such as MNRE, the Solar Energy Corporation of India and power company NTPC (National Thermal Power Corporation). “MNRE has appointed an expert committee to draft a National Energy Storage Mission, which is anticipated to be launched this year. We have also come up with initiatives to create industry capabilities and help IESA members to help develop business,” says Walawalkar. “India has already seen more than 1GWH of deployment of advanced energy storage technologies for distributed applications, and the market is expected to grow exponentially in the coming years. “I would say overall we have achieved the key objective and now we are looking at the next five years with renewed interest and with some new ambitions as well. In 2017, IESA upgraded its mission to make India a global hub for R&D and manufacturing of advanced energy storage and EV technologies by 2022.” Microgrids and battery back-up The Indian government has set a target to deploy 175GW of renewable energy by 2022, says Walawalkar. “It is evident that energy storage technolo-
52 • Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook
gies have to play a key role in achieving this goal. “Key applications at grid scale include the provision of fast response ancillary services such as frequency regulation, renewable ramp rate control, smoothing and firming up renewable power and investing in transmission and distribution.” He said energy storage was crucial in improving rooftop solar penetration, and an essential part of microgrids ‘for providing energy access to every citizen’. “We need a stable, robust and flexible grid for significant renewable energy integration,” he says, and over the past three or four years, says the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission has introduced ancillary services and is evaluating proposed changes such as five-minute scheduling and real-time markets. “The anticipated launch of an ancillary services market can create 1GWh-2GWh of opportunity for energy storage technologies in India,” he says. And one area in which energy storage technology will be vital is in the growing microgrid sector.” At the moment, lead acid batteries predominantly back up microgrid systems. In India the lead acid battery industry is still growing by 10% a year, and is estimated to employ more than 140,000 people. IESA has set up what it calls a MICRO initiative to look at and address challenges facing developers and agencies of microgrids. The system aims to implement a real-time monitoring system at as many microgrids as possible and use the data collected to predict failures in advance and work out how to make the microgrids sustainable. “IESA under the MICRO initiative undertook a year-long study to develop an operations and maintenance manual for lead batteries, which can address some of the concerns with using them in microgrids,” says Walawalkar. “Now we are also conducting a project to explore faster charging with lead acid batteries. “The Indian market is dominated by lead acid batteries and IESA anticipates that they will continue to play a significant role in the Indian grid for the coming decade. “They are the preferred choice of customers for power back-up applications and almost 8% of residential customers are using rooftop solar with lead acid batteries. Indian manufacturers are also working on introducing advanced lead batteries
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RAHUL WALAWALKAR, PRESIDENT OF INDIA ENERGY STORAGE ALLIANCE AND CES INDIA
The Indian market is dominated by lead acid batteries and IESA anticipates that they will continue to play a significant role in the Indian grid for the coming decade. including lead carbon and the UltraBattery. “They are expected to get competition from lithium ion batteries, particularly for applications that require daily or multiple times per day usage.” While lead battery back-up is predominant, it is not the only chemistry being used. On February 13 IESA announced its first gridscale lithium ion battery energy storage system had gone into service at Rohini, Delhi. Owned and operated by AES Corporation and Mitsubishi, the batteries were supplied by Fluence under a JV with AES and Siemens. “For less than four-hour grid-scale applications, Li ion batteries are being
installed and preferred,” says Walawalkar. “More than 40MWh of grid-scale projects are being tendered or contracted. Li-ion batteries have won the tenders or are at the forefront unless a particular technology is being specified.” IESA says it is expecting enough investment in the country to see up to four lithium battery gigafactories to be built over the next few years, with talks in the final stages for the first one between BHEL (Bharat Heavy Electricals) and Libcoin, a consortium including Australian firm Magnis Energy, Duggal Family Trust and the US battery specialist Charge CCCV. Overall, the IESA says, the Indian market for storage will grow to more than 300GWh over the next seven years — including EVs and behind-the-meter storage as well as grid-scale. Whether the grid is backed up by the traditional lead batteries or newcomers lithium, the lights surely have a better chance of staying on than they did in 2012.
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PROFILE: DARAMIC IN INDIA
Boots on the ground — why local operations can pay off Daramic, the international lead battery separator firm, continues to expand its business in India. The firm sees location in the country as vital to its commercial strategy.
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ocation. Location. Location. It’s the mantra of realtors around the world. It’s also an issue that enters the world of commerce. Where you place your business can be vital to its health — considerations such as transport, the supply chain, the legal and tax framework and much more can be vital. And this becomes all the more vital when you’re doing business in the developing world, where issues such as the availability of expertise, a trained workforce and management with a knowledge of local market conditions can be vital. In the huge land mass that is India — the seventh largest country in the world with a population of close to 1.4 billion and almost equal to that of China — the issue becomes even more pressing. Should you keep your existing offices in your home country and ship product out to India? Or is the extra expense of setting up another factory in a foreign country worth the outlay? One company, the international battery separator firm Daramic, says it has found the solution by basing its operations in India. Daramic, a subsidiary of chemicals giant Asahi Kasei, has a history of involvement with India that began just over 10 years ago. Rather than start an operation from scratch Daramic reckoned it could leap frog its entry in the market with the acquisition of a local battery separator firm. And in 2008, it acquired Super-Tech Battery Components Pvt in Bangalore, in the south of the country. Even before India’s electronics and computer driven revolution were firmly under way, Bangalore had a reputation as being at the centre of the country’s high-tech industry.
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Super-Tech, which entered the battery separator business in 1985, was not just well known but had a reputation for providing a quality product — a strength that Daramic knew it could build further on. Daramic itself, founded in 1930, has a well known history of innovation. In 1969 Daramic invented and developed the first polyethylene (PE) separator and became the first manufacturer worldwide of PE separators a couple of years later. And at the time of the Super-Tech acquisition the firm had already gone some way towards making its imprint across Asia
Local operations offer a wide variety of other benefits — from distribution to marketing to customer support and much more. Essentially it’s having boots on the ground — Ahila Krishnamoorthy
Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook • 55
PROFILE: DARAMIC IN INDIA
We’re changing the relationship we have with our customers. For the last five years Daramic has been running a series of training seminars open to over 2,000 local battery manufacturers in the country. We’ve become a solutions provider rather than just a supplier — Dawn Heng — first in Prachinburi, Thailand in 2000 and later in Tianjin in China in 2006. “We realized immediately with SuperTech that this was a firm we could build on, take its local expertise, add our international flavour and develop it as our quality brand,” says Dawn Heng, global marketing director for Daramic. With typical energy Daramic advanced its plans further. By 2011 it had acquired a larger factory in Bangalore as it prepared to increase its production. Later that year it made the Bangalore facility the headquarters of its operations in the country. In 2013 it set up its Asian Technical Centre, also in Bangalore. This was specifically designed to explore making improved battery separators for the Asian region. “Our research centre gave us a unique chance to develop on the ground and test new products,” says Heng. “Local usage of the battery, the difference in the way batteries will be deployed are never going to be the same as in the western world.
Everything from the depth of discharge and related partial state of charge is at odds with the way that batteries work elsewhere. “There’s also a huge range of different applications for batteries in India — just think of the range nowadays from two wheelers to cars to trucks to e-rickshaws. You can’t simply take a template product from the US or Europe and put them as separators into Indian batteries,” he says. “Just think of the different road surfaces in the country, the different driving patterns, the different temperature and climate conditions. Separators play a vital part in the cycle life and performance of a battery and in India demands on the battery are rigorous.” There’s a related commercial advantage to this: the ability to sell a better product allows one to offer better battery life, better performance and increase the warranty. “That’s something other manufacturers can’t offer,” says Ahila Krishnamoorthy, managing director of Daramic Battery Separators India. “Local expertise and testing for R&D are vital in making a success in this market.” Further advances in the development of its Asian operations were the creation of a finishing facility in Baddi, in the north of India, in 2014. The year 2017 was a milestone year for Daramic India. One highlight in the spring was the opening of a major manufacturing plant in Gujarat. Daramic became the first company to invest in building the infrastructure to manufacture and locally supply PE battery separators in India. That year the firm also started the move to a new Asia Technical Centre near Bangalore. In July, Daramic launched RickLife — a robust polyethylene separator for flatplate e-rickshaw batteries. E-rickshaw batteries are exposed to a challenging deep cycle environment where premature battery failures are common. RickLife combines an improved glass mat, patented material formulation and unique profile rib design, which reduces positive active material shedding, water loss, grid corrosion and acid stratification. Daramic says the results show an improved cycle life
One key product in Daramic range known as DuraLife followed the unusual pattern of being launched in the Asian market first, and then two years later, in 2017, it was released worldwide
56 • Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook
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PROFILE: DARAMIC IN INDIA
Daramic has a well-known history of innovation. In 1969 it invented and developed the first polyethylene (PE) separator and became the first manufacturer worldwide of PE separators a couple of years later of e-rickshaw batteries by as much as 50%. RickLife was the result of three years of research. In 2017-2018 Daramic India released HiCharge and XCharge, mostly for inverter batteries. Much of the firm’s recent research and testing has focused on improved separator design using different formulations and ribs that improve acid mixing and reduce acid stratification — which in turn reduces water loss and limits grid corrosion. Some of the outcomes of this research — which have also been achieved by working with Daramic’s main R&D centre at Owensboro in the US state of Kentucky — have been fascinating. These include a reversal of imposing the standard western template on an Indian battery. So, for example, one key product in this range, known as DuraLife, followed the unusual pattern of being launched in the Asian market first and then two years later in 2017 was released worldwide. Krishnamoorthy says that local operations offer a wide variety of other benefits — from distribution to marketing to customer support and much more. Essentially it’s having boots on the ground. “In terms of distribution, we have regional managers spread across the country and centres where our separators are stored. We can respond quickly to our 1,000 plus customers’ needs — since very early on we have been able to produce all that’s required. By comparison, the delivery time from the US or Europe can be a couple of months. “We understand our customers’ local needs far better than someone from outside the subcontinent. We are able, for example, to offer almost immediate customer support if needed.” Another advantage of being locally based is that this boots-on-the-ground approach has a variety of side benefits. “We’re changing the relationship we have with our customers. For the last five years Daramic has been running a series of training seminars open to more than 2,000 local battery manufacturers in the country,” says Heng. “We’ve become a solutions provider rather than just a supplier.”
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Daramic R&D centre in Bangalore
JUST OVER A DECADE LATER … Since entering the country, Daramic India has grown from just one sales location-cum-finishing operation in India in 2008, to the company operating from three locations: a head office and Asia Technical Centre in Bangalore, a manufacturing plant in Dahej, Gujarat and a finishing facility in Baddi, Himachal Pradesh.
Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook • 57
INTERVIEW: ADOR DIGATRON
Joint ventures: when one and one make three Ador Digatron is one of the best-known names in the Indian testing and battery formation sector. Batteries International spoke to Sunil Bhambhani, managing director of the firm. manufacturers, Siam GS, Hitachi, Furukawa are very happy customers of Ador Digatron. In India apart from the large end of the industry, Ador Digatron testers and formation equipment are also being used by small battery manufacturers.
How has the battery testing market changed over the past couple of years? What sort of institutions are buying your equipment? How is the lithium side of things developing? Previously only the larger battery industry players and government-approved laboratories invested in testing equipment. However, the present trend is much different: in addition to approved government labs, private testing labs, institutes, even smaller scale battery manufacturers are now investing in test equipment for their R&D and their production lines. In the lithium industry this equipment is now being used for cells as well as for pack testing. At present as there is no company manufacturing lithium cells in India, the demand is entirely for pack testers (Li-ion cells are presently imported in to India). However, demand for cell testers will see a big increase in 2019. Today Ador Digatron has the best of technology in lithium ion cell and pack testers. The rating sizes that are popular: 10kW to 60kW With initiatives around looking to move from lithium cell assembly to cell manufacturing how do you anticipate this market will develop? It is changing and changing very rapidly. Organizations such as BHEL, RAASI, Exide, Amara Raja, Tata, Suzuki to name a few all have announced significant investment plans to manufacture Li-Ion cells in India. The establishment of the National Mission on Transformative Mobility and Battery Storage will also
What are the changes that have happened since the partnership in 2013 created Ador Digatron? And the advantages of being local in terms of the services you provide?
Sunil Bhambhani, managing director, Ador Digatron help foster a local manufacturing eco system in a very big way in India. Thinking formation and related work, could you tell us more about the lead side of your business? You sell to some of the best names in the Indian battery business don’t you? The formation equipment business will always grow, whether it is for the lead acid or lithium sector. The latest trend shows an uptick in demand for IGBT/ SIC based formation rectifiers, which Ador Digatron has been selling in India and SE Asia for quite some time. Clients such as Exide, Amara Raja, Tata GY, Livguard, Okaya — to name a few — and in SE Asia all the big Japanese
There has been a sea change in everything that we do. Two well known industry brands in this region coming together has impacted our success in a big way and our customers have also experienced the addition of the latest technology products for the battery industry in the region. Advantages! Before 2013 test equipment was being imported from Digatron in Germany. But once the JV was in place, we commenced manufacturing test equipment here in Pune, India. New technology products such as IGBT/SIC based formation were also introduced into the market and are being manufactured by us in India now. We are proud to shout out GERMAN TECHNOLOGY NOW BEING MADE IN INDIA given that the quality of what we make in India is indistinguishable from what we make in Germany. Together we have strengthened our position significantly in SE Asia as well. We
Before 2013 test equipment was being imported from Digatron in Germany. But once the JV was in place, we commenced manufacturing test equipment here in Pune, India
58 • Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook
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INTERVIEW: ADOR DIGATRON
have established big service and support hubs now in three countries. The JV has proved incredibly successful, adding value to both partners in the form of market access, growth, technology and sustainable R&D. It is an interesting case study in getting a JV relationship right, very much from the get-go. Some foreign firms say that their ability to trade from afar isn’t a problem — letters of credit and a good shipping agent solve pretty much all the difficulties they encounter. They also have specialist service agents on the ground in India that can act for them. What are your thoughts about this? Trading from afar will always be a challenge in India unless you have a good local distribution or manufacturing partner. Tariff and non-tariff barriers aside, the need for a strong service network is paramount. This cannot be done from offshore. Further products for the India, SE Asian market must be resilient, robust and should provide a strong price-value match. This can’t be done through providing a one size fits all product imported into the region. This is one of the reasons the Ador Digatron JV has been so successful. We can provide a high technology solution that is localized for the unique regional challenges, and yet is good value for money and resilient at the same time. Some say that equipment made in India lacks the prestige of equipment made elsewhere — it’s a perception issue rather than a quality one. What would your comments be? Will other firms be looking at JVs or setting up operations in India? That was perhaps true some years ago. But today Mercedes Benz vehicles made here in India are sold in right-hand drive countries globally including Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong. Buyers don’t have a problem with that as the quality levels are the same as those of cars manufactured in Germany. The Indian Space Research Organisation
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The added advantage of making in India is being close to local support for service in the region (ISRO) holds the world record for the largest number of satellites put in space through one launch. If these two extreme cases of quality made in India are so casually possible, then it must be so for all other elements as well. It’s the same for many other products including Ador Digatron products. What we manufacture is indistinguishable in quality from that from Germany. Our customers in India and SE Asia have experienced this and are very happy to use the products we make in India. The added advantage of making in India is being close to local support for service in the region, allowing us to be embedded directly or through our service partners in many countries across Asia. One of the flavours of your management styles is to hold training and educational seminars to benefit the entire industry; could you tell us more? For the last few years we have been running annual seminars at our wonderful campus in Pune, geared towards industry CEOs, CTOs as well as industry regulators and large users. The intent of these seminars is to spread knowledge and create an industry forum for change. We have run these seminars in India, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. They have proved incredibly successful. Our focus areas are the lead acid and lithium ion industry as well as electric vehicle manufacturers for on-board and off-board charging and EV battery testing. How do you see India’s battery industry developing in the future? We see conflicting reports about India’s need for renewables as well as coal fired power plants. One requires energy storage, another doesn’t. Industry dissonance is starting to take
place rapidly. Lithium, lithium air, hydrogen fuel cell, graphite are all future technologies that are already in play and looking for a place to land in the energy storage and vehicle propulsion sectors. The Indian government is very serious about renewable energy and a move away from coal and diesel is discernible. We are excited about how our industry is changing and the visible and tangible difference our industry sector will make for a sustainable planet. There’s a lot of talk now of India looking at EVs but there doesn’t seem much sense given the problems being faced just in the provision and distribution of electricity. How do you see this developing? Electric mobility is the future and India is serious about achieving this with a majority of vehicles on the road moving away from hydrocarbon fuels by 2030. We have seen this happen right before our eyes over the last few years and it is incredibly exciting. Initially two and three-wheeled vehicles will adopt electric mobility in India, like what happened in China. Heavy passenger vehicles such as city buses will be the next sector that will change rapidly to electric mobility. Setting up the National Mission on Transformative Mobility and Battery Storage will encourage local manufacturing of batteries in a big way. It is true that we need to have charging infrastructure in place, lithium cell manufacturing plants, grid storage and the like. But these challenges are being addressed and new investments planned and rollouts happening as we speak. Most vehicle manufacturers have announced new lithium-based model launches in the next years. Stay tuned and watch this space…. It’s a Harvard case study on industry dissonance taking place as we watch!
Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook • 59
SEPARATORS
The central role of the battery separator Battery separators are a vital component of any lead or lithium battery. In recent years, advances in technology have increased direct charge acceptance, reduced water loss and increased electrolyte circulation, prolonging the life and power of the battery.
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sia Pacific is generally seen to be separator material of choice. the fastest-growing region for Later he was awarded a patent for battery separators. China leads the invention of Pluri Tubular Gauntthe way in demand for battery separa- lets, which were sold under the brand tors — mostly because the country has GLASPOL emerged as a hub for automobile proThe natural route for Govindan, who duction — but India is the next largest died in 2015, was to diversify his commarket. pany structure into manufacturing lead Most international separator manu- acid industrial batteries, which he did facturers have made moves into the during the mid-1970s. The landmark Indian market but Daramic, owned by moment for the firm was the steady The inside of the Entek plant Japanese chemical giant Asahi Kasei, export of some 4,000 traction batteries running the world’s largest line in has taken the largest market share. (See annually to the USSR. The Celtek brand lead battery separators related feature in this yearbook.) Dara- for the batteries eventually became the mic in particular has taken the Make in name of one part of the A G Group firm special separator known as RickLife for India message to heart and continues to in 1989. India’s burgeoning e-Rickshaw market. invest in manufacturing plants across The factory where the separators are E-Rickshaw batteries are exposed to the country. made is in Peenya, Bengaluru in the a challenging deep cycle environment, Other firms such as Entek, another southern state of Karnataka. Its covered where premature battery failures are world class separator firm, has formed area is some 26,600 square feet and it is common. a joint venture in Indonesia with local set in five acres of land. The whole comRickLife combines an improved glass firm Separindo — the plex employs around 300 mat, special material formulation and aim is to export separapeople. profile rib design, which reduces positors across the region With the arrival of the tive active material shedding, waterloss, and enter the Indian first moves in India to grid corrosion, and acid stratification. market that way. manufacture lithium bat- Daramic says its results show that the A large proportion of tery cells — as opposed product delivers improved cycle life of separators at the cheaper to their assembly — there e-Rickshaw batteries by as much as 50%. end of the Indian battery will be a growing demand Another product Daramic has demarket are shipped from for lithium battery separa- signed, called HiCharge, is for tubular China. tors, which have a more batteries — commonly used in India Perhaps the best complex and difficult when paired with inverters as they are known Indian brand manufacturing process. best suited for deeper cycle products is MICROTEX. The Meanwhile, huge ad- and much used as back-up for power company was set up as vances in separator outages in the home. Tubular batteries Mysore Thermo Electric technology continue to are more expensive but last longer. Industries in 1969 by emerge. Daramic, for exThe benefits to the life cycle of the batAmbraith Govindan, ample, has produced a tery are similar to those for RickLife. an entrepreneur and inventor. At the time wooden/rubber sepaPerhaps the best known Indian brand is MICROTEX. rators were the norm The company was set up as Mysore Thermo Electric in Indian batteries and Govindan championed Industries in 1969 by Ambraith Govindan (pictured), an the cause of PVC as the entrepreneur and inventor
60 • Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook
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E-RICKSHAW
The rise and rise of the three-wheeler EV
A decade ago the first e-Rickshaws started to appear in volumes. They are now the most ubiquitous electric vehicle in the world.
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bout 10 years ago, a new vehicle started to appear on India’s roads — it was similar to the traditional tuktuk, the three wheeled petrol/diesel driven mini-car, open at the sides, that have been traditional across the country. But it was different. It was powered by lead acid batteries. The thinking behind it was simple. Why not replace the two-stroke diesel engine in the auto-rickshaw with a battery? Aside
from the fact that auto-rickshaws are heavily polluting, weren’t the economics of it better with a battery? In 1999, Mahindra and Mahindra launched its first electric three wheeler, but commercialization proved difficult and its first company flopped. In 2006 Mahindra tried again and is now a leading player in electric vehicle and e-Rickshaw products. Within a decade the number of e-Rickshaws
We need to get to a place where the battery warranty should be 18 months so that e-Rickshaw drivers can make a better profit CS Ramanathan
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Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook • 61
E-RICKSHAW
The Amended Indian Motor Vehicle Act of 2015 defined e-Rickshaws as: • Three-wheeled vehicles run by battery power, four 12V batteries run a 650W motor • maximum speed not more than 25kmph • can carry 4-5 passengers • requires neither registration nor licence plate • allowed to carry a maximum of four passengers and 40kg of luggage • e-carts can transport goods of up to 310kg in Delhi had grown to 100,000. In mid-2018 it was reckoned that 1.5 million e-Rickshaws were to be found on India’s roads. But the 48V lead battery that powers this fleet of vehicles could be profitably improved to the advantage of both manufacturer and user. Today’s battery manufacturers are trying their best to create a battery life of 18 to 24 months for e-Rickshaws. Exide produces two batteries — a flat plate battery E-Ride Plus with a six month warranty for Rs7,000, and a tubular version for around Rs11,000
As many as 11,000 new e-Rickshaws hit the streets every month, and annual sales are expected to increase by about 9% by 2021, according to Rahul Mishra, a principal at consulting firm AT Kearney. Estimated size (INR m)
41,103 35,742 31,080 26,040
20,550
7,500
2015
2016
2017
2018E
E-Rickshaw batteries to grow at 16.4% CAGR Source: Industry
62 • Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook
2019E
2020E
with a 12 month warranty. The six-month warranty is common “Some tubular design batteries last for a period of 12 to 15 months, but most flat plate batteries only work for seven to eight months,” says CS Ramanathan, a well known battery consultant. “We need to get a place where the battery warranty should be 18 months so that e-Rickshaw drivers can make a better profit.” Ramanathan points out that a flat plate battery gives a greater capacity than a tubular plate battery but the life span is shorter and, as a consequence, tubular batteries are more popular. Lead 48V batteries continue to be the standard e-Rickshaw battery but there are related problems around them — as well as a shorter battery life, there is also their weight, which is around 120kg, and the long charging time required. This can be as much as 10 hours. This is an economic disadvantage in that auto-rickshaws using internal combustion engines simply require refuelling. Given some auto-rickshaws and taxis are driven around the clock — two drivers will alternate their shifts to get maximize profits from the vehicle — e-Rickshaws have a disadvantage. Cab aggregator (a ride hailing service) Ola has said it plans to add 10,000 electric vehicles — e-Rickshaws and electric auto rickshaws (hybrids that power the battery which then power the car) — to its fleet over the next year under its “Mission: Electric”. It also plans to put solar panels on the roofs of its vehicles. Ola says it will also bring one million electric vehicles on the road by 2021. It is in discussion with several state governments to create an appropriate policy environment to deploy electric three-wheelers. That said, other factors coming into play are that e-Rickshaws are cheaper to maintain than the traditional auto-rickshaw; and perhaps most importantly, given that air quality in India’s cities is some of the worst in the world, they make no carbon dioxide or NOx emissions. (Though of course much of the smog generated from coal-fired power stations is distributed elsewhere.) One solution could well be the use of lithium ion batteries which provide vastly improved cycle life, quicker charging and are lightweight. The disadvantage of course is price. The average cost of a lithium ion battery is around Rs55,000 to Rs60,000 ($800 to $850) more
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E-RICKSHAW
Representative companies that have launched electric rickshaws in India • Adapt Motors • Atul Auto
India is planning to deploy electric vehicle charging stations every 25km along its highways and roads. This is in line with the government’s ambitious 2030 deadline of having 25%-30% of vehicles in the country all-electric by 2030
• CEEON INDI • Dilli Electric Auto • Entice Impex (Gatti E-Rickshaw) • Gayam Motor Works • Go Green BOV • Infinite e-solutions • Kinetic Green • Mahindra Electric • OK play • REEP Industries — REEP Motors • Volta Motors
than a lead battery, according to Kinetic Energy, an early pioneer of lithium powered eRickshaws. A related problem is that e-Rickshaws run on batteries that put extra strain on the overtaxed electricity grid. An average electric rickshaw takes up to 7-7.5 units of electricity, which is charged domestically (or commonly by pilfered electricity through unregistered sources). In its drive to improve India’s charging infrastructure the finance ministry is finalizing a plan to spend about Rs40 billion ($600 million) over the next five years. The greater part of this money will be for e-Rickshaws. India is planning to deploy electric vehicle charging stations every 25km along its highways and roads. This is in line with the government’s ambitious 2030 deadline of having 25% of vehicles in the country all-electric by 2030. EVI Technologies, which is receiving state funding, said this February it is looking to install up to 20,000 EV charging stations at key locations across India within the next 18 months. At the end of 2017 India had just 425 public charging stations. Many aspects of the e-Rickshaw business are still unregulated. One recent survey suggested that just 150 of the 3,000 e-Rickshaw drivers in one city had a driving licence. Additionally, as both surveys and anec-
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dotal evidence suggest, e-Rickshaw drivers routinely carry far more passengers and goods than is legal or safe. But the e-Rickshaw boom looks unstoppable. As many as 11,000 new e-Rickshaws hit the streets every month, and annual sales are expected to increase by about 9% by 2021, according to Rahul Mishra, a principal at consulting firm AT Kearney. Major players in this market are Mahindra & Mahindra and Kinetic Engineering, along with smaller outfits that assemble parts imported from China.
Electric three-wheelers are cheaper to run than their petrol counterparts (Rs per km) Source: Bloomberg New Energy Finance
Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook • 63
INTERVIEW: ILZDA’S PUGAZHENTHY
Time to view the big picture India’s India Lead Zinc Development Association executive director L Pugazhenthy — affectionately known to all as Pug — spoke to Batteries International about ILZDA, the threat of lithium and the future of lead in the country.
Pug has been recognized for his outstanding contribution to the lead industry in particular for ILZDA’s work on encouraging safe recycling of lead. (See lead recycling section for more details.)
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heoretically L Pugazhenthy, the head of ILZDA, should be worried. For an organization that triumphs the cause of lead, the constant chatter that lithium batteries was India’s storage future should be concerning at least. But it doesn’t bother him an iota. Rather he’s more positive on lead than ever. The lithium battery industry is surrounded by hype, Pug says. The reality is that even in 10 years’ time, it will not make anything like the inroads into the lead industry that its the proponents of doom have forecast.
64 • Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook
“At the moment it’s maybe 1% of the market,” he tells Batteries International. “But even if it should increase to 10% or even 15%, that still leaves 85% of the market belonging to lead.” And the lead market is only going to grow and grow, says Pug. Indeed, independent research figures make the case for him — some outfits are predicting that lead battery sales could increase by a compound annual growth rate of 7%. Hardly an industry in decline. “The lead battery industry used to be only auto batteries but now every application in the country is using lead batteries — for inverters, in houses, offices and schools, energy back-up is very common, and in telecoms, every telecom tower will have a large number of batteries. There’s also UPS, renewable energy, EVs, e-rickshaws and two-wheelers — these sectors are getting bigger and bigger. “I’ve seen lead batteries grow from being an industrial product to a common household commodity that’s used on a daily basis.” Lithium batteries, says Pug, are extremely small scale and not expected to make a dent in the energy storage industry any time soon. “I don’t think lithium is going to be big in the world either — there’s a lot of hype but unlike lead, which is widely dispersed in the world, and widely recycled, lithium as a natural resource is not available in many countries and that’s going to be a big issue. Cobalt is another problem. Over 50% of the world’s cobalt comes from the Congo — it’s not available in many other places. “Whereas lead is the most affordable energy source in any country — in southeast Asia, China, India it’s the cheapest source and it’s
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INTERVIEW: ILZDA’S PUGAZHENTHY
been a proven source for all these decades.” He admits that lithium battery makers are trying to bring down the cost of their products but that won’t be easy for these reasons, and cost will be the biggest obstacle in India. “For expensive cars you will need lithium batteries, if you want to go on the expressway and drive a long way, that’s where lithium will come in. If you need a higher performance, those who can afford it will get lithium. “But the common man in Bangladesh, in India, in China, in Myanmar, in Sri Lanka — they look for cheaper, durable and proven products.” The Indian government has set a target to increase the ratio of EVs to 30% of new car sales by 2030, which could give a boost to the lithium ion battery industry, but Pug says the infrastructure is not yet there for charging this number of vehicles. “India is the size of a continent, not a country,” he says. “Who is going to do the charging? Where is the investment going to come from? Nobody knows anything about that. However one thing we do know is that India is the biggest market for two-wheelers and will remain the biggest market for some time. “We produce and consume 19 million two-wheelers every year — even more than China, where there are 17 million. And in all of these two-wheelers it will be lead batteries, because these vehicles don’t need a long driving range, they just do local runs, go to school, the shops, on the farm — no more than 50-70 kilometres a day. And they can be plugged in at home or anywhere.” Another growing market, says Pug, is the e-Rickshaw market. “This is shared mobility. For a small amount you can share a ride from the station to your home, and e-Rickshaws are also run on lead batteries because the operator makes more profit on lead batteries, maintenance is easier and lead is rougher and tougher. There are no safety issues, like there are with lithium, and everybody’s using them.” Lithium batteries are not even manufactured in India yet, he says, although a joint venture signed between Exide Industries and Leclanché in July 2018 was said to have a production line producing lithium batteries ready to come online this year. At the time, Gautam Chatterjee, managing director and CEO of Exide, said the JV would “complement our leading position in
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In my lifetime I have read many obituaries for lead batteries. But in fact there are more and more applications and more and more markets for lead batteries, so I don’t take them too seriously the lead acid storage battery market in India and allow us to take the lead in the lithiumion battery industry”, and Leclanché CEO Anil Srivastava said the JV would provide his company with ‘giga-scale procurement volumes’. “At the moment it’s all imported from China, Japan and Korea, but it’s not big and it’s not posing a challenge to lead,” says Pug. “There’s no recycling here, no re-use, unlike with lead. And that’s one of my major concerns with lithium — the technology is not there yet for recovering and recycling.” And that’s one of lead’s big selling points: its recyclability. In India the industry is big, with one million tonnes of lead consumed in the country, most of it for lead batteries, and 80% of it from recycled lead. It’s also not standing still, and he tells Batteries International that work is being done with battery manufacturers to make improvements in the technology itself, for example with different alloys and additives which, he claims, in some cases mean the batteries can even now compete with lithium ion in terms of performance as well as beat them on cost. “These improvements will come gradually and once the challenges are really on the horizon then the big boys will step up their research work. They are already working on improving batteries with their own R&D engineers, and we’re also working with international companies such as JCI. When there’s a challenge in the market from a competing product, R&D will get the focus. “In my lifetime I have read many obituaries for lead batteries,” he says. “But in fact there are more and more applications and more and more markets for lead batteries — so I don’t take them too seriously.”
However one thing we do know is that India is the biggest market for twowheelers and will remain the biggest market for some time
Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook • 65
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LEAD RECYCLING
Changing darkness into the joy of light ILZDA and Pure Earth have been piloting projects to encourage illegal backyard battery recycling to enter the mainstream — with benefits for all the players involved. Debbie Mason reports.
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his October a shocking report about lead poisoning and Indian children hit the headlines. A meta-analysis of 22 studies, by the Macquarie University in Australia, measuring the lead concentrations in the blood of Indian children showed that the number of children affected by lead poisoning was far higher than had been thought. Higher blood levels leads to shorter lives, impaired brain function — one µg/dL of lead contamination in the blood causes more than half a point loss of IQ — and physical disabilities. For children living in India, whose blood lead level contamination is at almost 7 µg/ dL, the impact on IQ is huge, says lead author of the report Bret Ericson. In India, recycling lead batteries is commercially attractive. But troublingly so, in that it can be profitably done in environmentally responsible plants and also profitably achieved in unregulated back yards, causing death and illness to those around it. “Lead battery recycling is a big activity and growing by volume every year,” says India Lead Zinc Development Association executive director L Pugazhenthy. “But there is a big problem with backyard recycling, which, together with small-scale battery assemblers, almost makes up a second-tier lead battery industry. So apart from the need to tighten up the illegal recycling plants, the lead battery industry in India is in a good state of health,” says Pugazhenthy, who is better known in the industry as Pug. Small battery recyclers will recycle perhaps just half a tonne of batteries in a day, but they don’t sell the lead to the big battery manufacturers — their market is what Pug describes as small, street-corner ‘fly-by-night’ battery assemblers, who in turn sell their re-conditioned batteries for cash. They are constantly shut down with the threat of large fines and even prison, but
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simply start up again elsewhere. “They are very small, in villages and small towns, and it’s an informal sector that is very hard to track down because they’re not registered, they don’t appear anywhere in the system,” says Pug. “They create pollution in the environment of the neighbourhood where they’re operating — there is no air pollution control system, no chimney, no cyclone back filter — just simple smelting apparatus. “I don’t know of any actual lead poisoning cases but lead particles will be disappearing into the atmosphere and into the soil and sometimes even the water at ground level.” It’s something that ILZDA is working on with the International Lead Association and the Pure Earth Blacksmith Institute, an international organization that aims to solve pollution problems in lower income countries. “Regulatory bodies should be much stricter, they need to go for more penal action and see that these guys either disappear or improve their technologies,” says Pug. After 20 years of ignoring the issue, the Indian government finally woke up to the problems in the industry and allowed ILZDA to draft regulations that were implemented in 2001 governing battery makers, recyclers and retailers, Pug says. The regulations included dealers returning stock to manufacturers, computerized tracking of batteries and recycled lead, and a national inventory of stock.
A big proportion of lead batteries are made by back yard manufacturers and sold as unbranded, mostly in rural areas, and partly in an urban set-up with a much lower price tag attached as they don’t comply with any regulatory or statutory norms Thuppil Venkatesh
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LEAD RECYCLING
There is a big problem with backyard recycling, which, together with small-scale battery assemblers, almost makes up a secondtier lead battery industry L Pugazhenthy “The regulations were mainly for the collection of used batteries and once collected, storage and safe transportation. They also made sure the batteries were given to the green recyclers and not the informal sector,” says Pug. “We held seminars and meetings, everyone was on board with this, the battery makers, retailers, the recyclers — even school children knew about this — the awareness was really increased.” But the problem has only been partially solved — ILZDA’s push has meant change in one direction — and other initiatives are running alongside this. Pure Earth, ILZDA and the International Lead Association, which is based in the UK, are working together to change this. The three aim to encourage the many thousands of backstreet lead battery recyclers to join a programme that aims to ultimately merge this so-called “informal sector” into the official Indian organizations that would eventually enable them to join the mainstream lead battery industry. The scale of India’s lead recycling problem and related health needs is breathtaking in its scope. Pure Earth, which changed its name in 2014, ranks the used lead battery industry as the worst polluting industry in lower income countries in terms of disability-adjusted life years (DALY). DALY is a World Health Organization measure of ‘disease burden’, or the number of years lost because of ill health, disability or early death. Pure Earth estimates the number of DALYs lost due to used lead batteries is between two million and 4.8 million worldwide. In India, the figure is difficult to confirm because of the nature of lead battery manufacturing and recycling in the country — much of which takes place in the illegal and unregulated back yard sector. Recyclers sell their products to street corner battery manufacturers and assemblers, who in turn sell their products for cash. Thuppil Venkatesh, widely known as the ‘Lead Man of India’, is the national chairman of INSLAR — the Indian Society for Lead
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Awareness and Research. “The situation is bad in most of the cities in India,” he told Batteries International. “Back yard recycling can’t be evaluated as no formal systematic study has been carried out. The only way to find out how many used batteries are recycled informally is to take into account the annual production of lead acid batteries in the organized sector and the batteries collected. “In my view less than 50% of batteries are getting back to licensed vendors. “A big proportion of lead batteries are made by back yard manufacturers and sold as unbranded, mostly in rural areas, and partly in an urban set-up with a much lower price tag attached as they don’t comply with any regulatory or statutory norms.” Using the carrot, not the stick In the Pure Earth, ILA and ILZDA project, these small organizations are not being threatened with prison or hefty fines. They are being encouraged to upgrade their equipment and get themselves qualified so they can merge with each other and form larger, official companies. Promila Sharma is the South Asia co-ordinator for Pure Earth. To assess what was going on in India, the organization went on a reconnaissance mission to India’s poorest state of Bihar, where much of this informal recycling and battery assembling takes place. “We are not an advocacy group — we do not believe in naming and shaming. Our focus is on public health,” Sharma said. “In Bihar we have one of the worst case scenarios, where almost 90% of the battery recycling is happening in the informal system, because there are hardly any formal recyclers in the state. “They are receiving industrial battery scrap from Nepal, from Bangladesh — and this has all been corroborated by the ILA, which has been in Nepal and seen it first hand. We went to Bihar on a working mission to the state to look at public health and how we could mitigate it. “We found many sites just across the road from schools, or above small shops, and when we tested children under 10 years old we found that on average, their blood lead level measured 30mcg/dl. The safe level is just 5mcg. But they’re not aware of these health issues, and with our partners in industry and government we are trying to figure out how to solve it.
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LEAD RECYCLING
We are going to collectivize a group of up to 25 informal recyclers and try to help them build the capacity and qualifications to do it properly, maybe joining forces to become bigger organizations but with universally accepted standards Promila Sharma “One solution is to encourage and persuade them to get into the mainstream, to do it the right way. So we are going to do an experiment in Bihar. We are going to collectivize a group of up to 25 informal recyclers and try to help them build the capacity and qualifications to do it properly, maybe joining forc-
es to become bigger organizations but with universally accepted standards. “The project will look at developing medium and small size units and provide them with money to develop a small industry — we will hold their hands and try to showcase this as an experiment.”
THE TOXIC SITE IDENTIFICATION PROGRAMME Sharma says the project was brought about under the organization’s global Toxic Site Identification Programme, which identifies and assesses the implications on public health of various pollution-causing industries around the world. In 2009, Pure Earth India hired people to — quite literally — walk the streets to seek out informal lead battery sellers and recyclers. “We trained people in how to find sites, how to interview people, how to sample contaminated land,” she says. “We hired freelancers, local NGO partners — in Bangladesh, for example, we hired researchers from universities to carry out investigations. “All of these data were added to an online database and we now have a protocol that is similar to the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Hazards Ranking System.” (The HRS is the principal mechanism used by the EPA to add waste sites to its National Priorities List, based on limited investigations that assess the potential of sites to pose a threat to human health or the environment.) “We try to look at pollution sources — these people we hire go out in the field, meet the locals, contact the local agencies and record all that information,” says Sharma. “Between 2009 and 2011, our database had more than 350 sites on it that were all heavy metal pollutants. We handed this information over to the Indian
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government, and out of those sites, we identified more than 100 where we said the government needed to intervene to save lives. “The government took cognizance and from 2012 onwards they worked to get those sites cleaned up. “That was when we noticed that lead was one of those pollutants. It was there in the soil, and that’s when on further investigation we found that the informal sector was everywhere. It’s difficult to count them, there are pockets everywhere and the network is too far spread out.” After securing some funding from USAID, the international aid arm of the US federal government, Pure Earth organized teams to look for lead-contaminated sites, and after 2015, more than 200 were found — potentially affecting the lives of some 40 million people. “And this is not the entire country,” says Sharma. Sharma says the Indian government has set out actionable points including reviewing current legislation and rules on battery management and handling and to increase awareness of lead pollution so that the issue becomes as well known as air pollution. The last official government rules to be implemented on battery handling and management were published in 2001 by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. They include making manufacturers, importers,
assemblers and re-conditioners responsible for collecting used batteries, filing half-yearly sales returns, ensuring safe transport of batteries and creating public awareness through advertising and promotions. The disparate nature of the informal battery sector makes the rules largely unenforceable. In the 2015 study ‘Managing Used Lead Acid Batteries in India: Evaluation of EPR-DRS Approaches’, by the department of Business Economics at the University of Delhi, researchers recommend a ‘Scenario II’, where informal recycling would be integrated with the mainstream recycling system through separate collection agencies at municipal/ town/regional levels to collect batteries from retailers, consumers and scrap dealers. “It takes care of the interests of both the formal and informal stakeholders,” the report says. “By using the services of the itinerant collectors and eliminating informal smelters, Scenario II strengthens formal recycling. A successful EPR-DRS (extended producer responsibility and deposit refund system) for ULABs in India can be achieved by integrating informal recycling through the introduction of a separate collection agency, strengthening the upstream DRS, completely eliminating informal recycling, and effectively monitoring compliance. Penalties could be levied for compliance failure, the researchers recommend.
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ABERTAX
Abertax: advanced battery monitoring and management
D
uring the last decade, battery monitoring has become more acceptable by the battery supplier and end user alike. This is forced by more demanding operation conditions and a higher current draw of the new AC drive systems of the material handling vehicles, which has an impact on the battery lifetime. The general warranty statements of min. five-year operation time became difficult to achieve and both the battery supplier and the battery operator showed more and more interest in having better control of the operation conditions, especially in cases where the batteries fail prematurely. Today quite a number of such systems are available on the market, from basic electronic ‘toys’ to high quality devices, which makes it difficult for the end user to decide on the best option. The fact is, there is no one solution or one product for all applications. The type of battery; its operation conditions; whether it is a stand-by or motive power system; data required and the demands from the battery operator are the considerable factors. Basically, four data can be measured: • voltage (preferred plus half voltage) • charge and discharge current • temperature (one or two measuring points) • acid level (for flooded batteries) Sensors for measuring this data are easily available on the market in different qualities and price levels and it´s not magic to design and produce a management system. However, the skilled engineering involved is not in measuring and storing this data. It´s the know-how and the experience of how to quantify the measured data. As mentioned earlier, there is no uni-
versal battery management system for all needs. The applications are different, the data required from the operator are different; it is also a question of price and how much to invest, and what benefit the end-user will have. The experience and data evaluation of the last decade indicates that when a battery monitor is installed, this results in a much longer operation time for the batteries. It also shows a warning or an alarm when the operation conditions are harmful to the battery life, e.g. high temperature or deep discharge. In principle we can differentiate between a battery monitor and a battery management system. A battery monitor is a low-cost unit measuring voltage, acid level and temperature. Some come with a shunt or hall sensor to measure current as well. Some of the units have an advanced software (fuzzy logic) to identify charging, discharging and idle events and can calculate the number of cycles and DOD. A example of a device with this intelligent software is the ABERTAX BMS, a very robust and reliable system with 10,000 devices already in operation. It includes a sophisticated software to calculate cycles, DOD etc. The ABERTAX BMS measures • full and half voltage • acid level (for flooded batteries) • temperature (battery and ambient) The main purpose of such units is to • indicate any battery problem (like high temp, low acid level) to avoid premature failure, and • accumulate and store all data to give the service manager a clear indication of why the battery failed or why it has a problem. This avoids long measurements and testing.
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The robustness of this system is such that it can be reinstalled on at least three further batteries. The ABERTAX BMS just needs resetting and programming of the new battery data. This of course is strongly related to the investment and reduces the price by up to three times. After the long-term positive experience of this system in the material handling applications, a lowcost version has been developed for the increasing market of small electric powered vehicle like electric bikes, scooters and rickshaws. An important advantage of this ABERTAX BMS is universal use to any battery chemistry including lithium. However if the battery operator needs more information than just battery data history, a sophisticated battery management system is required. The top of the range product is the ABERTAX e2BMS. It has all the measuring features of a basic battery monitor plus extensive software including wireless data transmission. This system is setting new standards in terms of data connectivity. The unit can monitor all devices and allows remote viewing of the collected data over the internet or over the internal company network. Just at a glance what this system can offer: • Complete battery control, with immediate warning or alarm by SMS or mail. • Control of the charging station for fleet operation (battery priority) • Charging management (wireless communication with the charger) • Communication and data collection of the electric powered vehicle • Comprehensive reporting, battery and financial • Reduce total cost of ownership
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BLOOD LEAD LEVELS
Personal hygiene and the blood lead reduction programme for India ESCA’s Daniel Askin reviews current methods for keeping blood lead levels at healthy levels and presents them from his experience in an Indian context.
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ew regulations governing worker health and safety in the lead industry are at the heart of India’s future. India already has strong environmental regulations in place for air and water emissions. Waste is well regulated. Around the world, in the European Union, Canada, Australia and the US, new, lower blood lead limits for workers continue to emerge. They each require medical removal from lead exposed jobs at a confirmed blood lead level of 30 micrograms per decilitre of whole blood. It is only a matter of time before blood lead levels are regulated in India.
A blood lead control programme will not eliminate turnover but it does reduce turnover, making front line managers’ lives easier, reducing operating costs and increasing efficiency
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With the spectacular growth in the Indian lead battery manufacturing and recycling sector, employee turnover remains an issue. In India’s strong and growing economy, with plenty of jobs available, the lead industry must compete for workers. Excess lead exposure is a contributor to high turnover rates — workers feel poorly and vote with their feet. A blood lead control programme will not eliminate turnover but it does reduce turnover, making front line managers’ lives easier, reducing operating costs and increasing efficiency. The best blood lead reduction and control programme is the one that prevents blood lead levels from increasing in the first place. It can take two to five times as long for a blood lead level to come down as it took to go up. Regardless of a person’s starting blood lead level, any blood lead reduction and control programme is the same. In theory, a blood lead control programme is simple. Each person needs to limit the lead absorbed in their body to less than the amount of lead their body can excrete. In practice this involves great attention to many details. The most cost effective place to start is with an enhanced personal hygiene programme. There are three ways lead can get into the body. It can be inhaled, eaten or absorbed through the skin. Lead enters the respiratory tract When lead dust and fumes are inhaled, some is deposited deep in the lungs and upper respiratory system, where it is then absorbed. The amount of inhaled lead deposited is size dependent. • Less than 5 microns — deep lung penetration, 95% will be deposited and absorbed;
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BLOOD LEAD LEVELS
• Between 5-120 microns — most deposits in the throat and lungs will be cleared by normal body defences into the nose or mouth, where it can be expelled or swallowed; • More than 120 microns — removed by nasal hair and mucus and then it will be expelled or swallowed. In smelting, soldering and burning operations where molten metal temperatures are high, the average particle size is very small. About 50% of the airborne lead in smelting operations is respirable size (less than 10 microns). About 25% is less than 1 micron. In battery manufacturing the average size is 15 microns with about 12% respirable size. About 5% of the airborne lead in battery operations is less than 1 micron. When airborne lead is inhaled, it can deposit in the mouth, nose or throat or enter the lungs. Small lead particles (< 5 microns) penetrate deeply and cannot be cleared and remain until absorbed into the blood. Inhaled lead cleared by coughing and other mechanisms re-enters the mouth, where it has a second chance to be absorbed by swallowing. For this reason, workers should always rinse their mouth before drinking. Lead absorbed after swallowing When lead is swallowed most is absorbed in the intestines and some in the mouth and stomach. How much enters the blood depends on its water solubility and the time since the last meal. The body absorbs four to 10 times more ingested lead than a worker who has had a good meal. Lead not diluted by food has more contact with the walls of the intestine and is absorbed more easily. One method that has been effective in India is to provide workers with a meal before work in addition to a meal in the middle of the shift. Water soluble lead is easily absorbed whether inhaled or ingested. Water insoluble forms of lead are also absorbed, but more slowly in the lungs and better dissolved by stomach acid. Lead’s toxicity is due to the fact that the body can’t tell the difference between lead and calcium. Calcium has many uses in the body including building bones and teeth as well as critical biochemical reactions at the cellular level. When too much lead is present it interferes with the important functions calcium performs in the body. The body will substitute lead for calcium randomly whenever lead is available.
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Fruit and vegetable fibres reduce the absorption of ingested lead. The importance of a healthy diet cannot be over emphasized. It is beneficial to teach nutrition to Indian workers Diet has a huge effect on lead absorption. All the major nutrient minerals interfere with the absorption of ingested lead. A diet high in fibre and calcium reduces the amount of lead absorbed. Adequate levels of vitamin D are required by the body to effectively use calcium. Most of India has sufficient sunshine to produce vitamin D, and supplements are rarely needed. Fruit and vegetable fibres reduce the absorption of ingested lead. The importance of a healthy diet cannot be over emphasized. It is beneficial to teach nutrition to Indian workers. If fingers are not clean then lead on them is transferred to the food and swallowed. In Indian plants it has proved beneficial to require workers to eat with spoons and not their fingers. In some locations this was achieved by organizing a committee of workers with medical and safety staff and have them develop a programme to implement this major change. In areas where naan is eaten with every meal, we have only been able to use spoons with the other parts of each meal. Lead on skin and hair Lead on the skin and hair can be inhaled or ingested at any time. When lead remains on the hair, skin and clothes after work the worker’s exposure continues all through the night or weekend and can be transferred to family members. The skin has a layer of dead cells on the outside that serves as a barrier between the internal body and the outside world. These dead cells are dry and have a high surface area compared to moist, healthy skin. Dry skin can retain and hold large amounts of lead dust. Underneath the outer layer is the living skin. The sweat ducts and hair follicles in the living skin provide a pathway for lead to enter and exit the body. In addition to lead dust that accumulates on the skin surface the body continuously excretes lead in sweat to the outer skin layer. Little lead is absorbed through the skin unless it is damaged or the lead is water soluble. Some of the ingredients used in low-cost skin cleaners can actually push lead into and
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BLOOD LEAD LEVELS
Good hydration is essential to maximize the amount of lead excreted
through the skin. Sweat is acidic and can also dissolve lead. Both water soluble lead and sweat dissolved lead can be absorbed via sweat ducts and hair follicles. Lead on the skin provides a continuous source of exposure unless frequently and thoroughly removed. How much lead is too much? The body has no use for lead, so it gets rid of it and it is excreted in urine, faeces, sweat, saliva, mucus, breast milk, ear wax, dead skin cells, hair, fingernails and toenails. The kidneys account for about half of the total lead excreted each day. Good hydration is essential to maximize the amount of lead excreted. Sweat can also be a significant excretion path, and sometimes lead excreted in sweat exceeds the amount removed by the kidneys. For workers to operate efficiently they need to stay hydrated to the point where their urine is nearly colourless. The World Health Organization (WHO) reviewed the scientific literature to determine a ‘tolerable dose’ for many chemical substances. Its current opinion is there is no safe dose of lead because the human body has no use for it. WHO did not always hold this position. Before this, WHO published a maximum tolerable dose for lead, called the ‘Provisional Tolerable Weekly Intake’. Their recommendation for lead was a maximum intake of 25 micrograms (mcg) of lead per kilogram (kg) of body weight per week. For a 50kg person this calculation yields 175 mcg of lead in 24 hours; and for a 100 kg adult, this calculates to 350 micrograms in a
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day. This quantity is equivalent to cutting a 100 milligram aspirin tablet into 300 pieces. One of these pieces weighs about 330 micrograms. The ‘Provisional Tolerable Weekly Intake’ was the best estimate of average lead exposure that would not result in a negative health impact. To reduce blood lead levels, the daily dose of lead must be less than the amount excreted. Only a portion of any total intake is absorbed. Some ingested and inhaled lead can be spat out. Some ingested lead passes through the system without being absorbed. This ‘tolerable dose’ value is the amount of lead that a human can excrete. If the absorbed dose of lead exceeds that excreted, then the blood lead level rises and lead is put into storage in bones, teeth, tissues and fat. If the dose is less than this, then the body can excrete old lead causing a reduction in the total body burden of lead. A reduction in blood lead is the result of many, many days when the absorbed dose is less than the amount you can excrete. Implementing a hygiene programme in India Even where airborne levels are low, sloppy personal habits will defeat every blood lead control measure. Blood lead problems can happen when there is no airborne lead and people are only handling lead parts. This is because their personal hygiene is too poor. Even where air lead levels are high, the combination of good personal hygiene and a good respirator program will lower blood lead levels. Indian management has several responsibilities and needs to: • Provide a work station where workers can stay clean while they do their job • Train workers to work cleanly • Provide the proper facilities and supplies for clean up • Teach workers how to wash and shower • Supervise and enforce all cleanliness rules. Effective clean up Removing lead from the skin and hair is not as simple as with common dirt. Lead particles are small and get trapped in the pores of the skin, clothing and gloves. Lead is heavy, sticky, difficult to wet and holds a large static charge. It adheres strongly to skin, clothes, shoes, gloves and respirators. Skin cleaners vary in their ability to remove lead. Typical industrial cleaners remove be-
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BLOOD LEAD LEVELS
The most common washroom mistakes are small sinks and not enough sink space for everyone to wash at the same time
tween 30% and 70% of lead. Speciality cleaners can remove 99%+ of the lead. Efficient removal of lead requires special cleaners. Lead, like calcium, reacts with most soaps, detergents and surfactants to form scum. This can glue to the surface being cleaned and can still be absorbed. Speciality cleaners for lead overcome this and the lead is released from the surface and floats away. The solubility of lead in all cleaners must be minimal. Skin cleaners cannot contain any surfactant that causes lead to penetrate the skin. Clean up Wash stations are critical to success. They need clean running water, skin cleaner, fingernail brushes, clean drying towels, a large sink and a mirror. In Indian plants hand wash instructions should be posted in the local language above all wash stations. People need to wash their hands, arms, face and neck every time they leave the plant floor — especially before eating, drinking or smoking. Since workers need to be well hydrated, the only exception to this is the water fountains in the plant (but they still need to rinse their mouths). The most common washroom mistakes are small sinks and not enough sink space for everyone to wash at the same time. In small sinks workers can’t wash and rinse their arms properly. The proper approach to washing up requires detailed training. At the wash station, hands should be prewashed and sleeves rolled. Since hands are going to wash arms, face and neck it is best they start out clean. This means a minimum 15 second wash and
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10 second rinse. Skin cleaners need to be worked under the fingernails. Each finger needs to be washed individually. Every inch of hands, both front and back, are washed and use a finger nail brush. After this the skin cleaner should be spread over the entire surface of hands, then arms, neck and face and then hands scrubbed, rinsed and dried with a clean towel. Workers are then ready for breaks or the shower to go home. In lead industries there are two groups of workers – the High Exposure (HE) group and the Low Exposure (LE) group. Neither group can be allowed to wear their plant shoes outside the plant gate or in the lunch room or clean change room. HE workers require company issued work clothes and showers. LE employees generally don’t require showers, but should still have company issued clothes so they are not taking work clothes home. Both groups should wash their hands again before they leave for the day. This final wash removes lead picked up in the changing room from touching work shoes, clothes or surfaces. At the end of the shift HE workers need to shower thoroughly. First, dirty clothes and protective equipment are handed in for cleaning. Workers should wear sandals in the changing and shower rooms. It is best to locate the shower room between the clean and plant side change rooms —the only way a person can get to the clean change room is through the shower. Sandals are stored in the clean change room and are ready for the next day to be worn back to the plant side change room. After their shower they pick up their street clothes and personal items in the clean locker room, wash their hands again and go home. It is necessary to teach people how to shower — getting wet is not sufficient. Many Indian workers have never taken a shower before and only washed with a bucket of water. A thorough cleaning of the skin and hair in the shower at the end of the shift eliminates lead exposure after each work day. If workers take lead home with them on hair or skin, they have no break from lead exposure and lead can be passed to their families. Lead testing Testing for lead on the skin is an essential training tool for teaching workers to wash thoroughly and helps workers develop confidence they are not taking lead home from
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BLOOD LEAD LEVELS
work. This inexpensive test uses colour change technology to make lead visible. It is part of new worker training and to spot check people before lunch, breaks and home. Once or twice a week every worker is tested to see if lead remains after washing and where the lead is located. The same test is also used to test respirators and work clothes after they are washed. www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJVKnnF-240 The blood lead test programme must be done with venous blood samples. Blood lead levels should be measured at least four times a year in lead exposed jobs. For others not directly in contact with lead, testing once or twice a year is normally sufficient. New workers should be tested before they start and then once a month for the first four to six months or until it is established they can manage their exposure. It is necessary to have a quality control programme in place for blood sample collection and analysis. One duplicate should be collected for every 50 to verify the lab’s accuracy. The lab should do a duplicate analysis for
Front line managers and supervisors must accept their responsibility to teach and enforce this programme if it is to be successful any blood lead result greater than 25 micrograms per decilitre. The blood sample room needs to be kept extremely clean and the stick site is cleaned with highly efficient lead removing skin cleaners. The importance of local Indian management support of the blood lead reduction and hygiene programmes cannot be over stressed. Teaching and enforcing personal hygiene cannot be delegated to the plant nurse or safety officer. Front line managers and supervisors must accept their responsibility to teach and enforce this programme if it is to be successful. Upper management has a critical role to provide the necessary resources and require that these programmes are implemented.
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TECHNOLOGICAL LANDSCAPE
Four start-ups Indian R&D at the government and institutional level is recognized as top-tier by international standards. However, next generation energy storage start-ups are struggling through a lack of finance....
Perhaps it’s inevitable that Indian innovation has focused on non-lead battery chemistries — for the most part that has been the characteristic of most inventions across the world. That said, although lithium battery innovators are entering a challenging competitive arena, good ideas still have the capability of rising to the surface, despite the noise from the others. Log9 Materials — EV range extender Log9 Materials is an India-based start-up specializing in graphene nanotechnology. Founded in 2014 by Akshay Singhal, Log 9 aims to introduce metal-air batteries that can add range to EVs but also provide back-up power for homes. Log9 showcased its metal-air battery at the India-UK Tech summit in 2018. The batteries are primary ones — they can’t be charged and recharged — but offer the possibility of working as an additional power source to offer greater range for an electric vehicle. The graphene membrane acts as the intermediary between the aluminium’s oxidation through air and water and the release of electrons/power. The technology is directly aimed at the electric vehicle market in India and the range anxiety associated with the lack of charging infrastructure across the country. Log9 says it has tested the concept in India and claims this type of battery can provide 10 times more energy density compared with lithium-ion, giving EVs a range of more than 1,000km. Log9 has yet to release performance statistics or pricing relating to its product.
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Gayam Motor Works — battery swapping technology — and more Brothers Rahul and Raja Gayam partnered Sri Harsha Bavirisetty in 2011 to launch EV maker — in particular the e-Rickshaw — Gayam Motor Works in Hyderabad. GMW, which says it staked out its position in the market with some of the world’s first electric auto-rickshaws and an innovative battery-swapping technology, has sold over 5,000 vehicles to more than 15 countries. Part of the GMW solution is — quite literally — to separate the battery from the car. The idea may not be new: it was proposed (and later dismissed) more than a decade ago. This time, however, the economics look different. To make refuelling convenient, GMW says it has developed lithium-ion batteries that can be swapped with fully charged ones in, claims the firm, less than a minute. “Right now, we are doing this manually, but we have plans to fully automate the service,” says Bavirisetty. By retaining ownership of the battery, GMW says it is able to reduce the sticker price of the threewheeler, and upgrade the battery as the technology improves.
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TECHNOLOGICAL LANDSCAPE
to watch… …but not through lack of ideas. Some 6,000 start-ups a year are created.
Ion Energy Labs — BMS to the fore Ion Energy’s founders Akhil Aryan and Alexandre Collet recently unveiled UDYR, claiming it to be the world’s most advanced portable lithiumion battery because of its battery management system. Akhil Aryan says the UDYR is an intelligent, modular, and portable 48V lithium-ion battery powered by ION’s proprietary battery management system, software platform and backend analytics, which enable enhanced performance and can increase battery life by up to 200%. The battery is compatible with most electric two-wheelers and threewheelers, allowing automotive OEMs to use the UDYR as a drop-in solution and accelerate their speed to market, says the firm. “The UDYR’s modularity means it can serve as a portable energy storage system that can be scaled up. Our BMS and software capabilities showcased by the UDYR are applicable to most lithium-ion battery technologies,” says Aryan. The ION Energy team has finished making the latest batch of UDYR batteries at its assembly facility in Nasik, India and has shipped them to Germany for testing. Earlier in 2018, ION Energy acquired France-based Freemens SAS, a provider of battery management systems for lithium ion batteries.
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Gegadyne Energy — lithium and supercaps Gegadyne Energy is a Mumbai based start-up looking to exploit the possibilities of a supercapacitor graphene-based lithium battery that would replace standard lithiumion batteries. The patent for the invention is still being processed. The firm says its proprietary battery technology can charge a battery from zero to full in under 15 minutes. “The technology will revolutionize the energy sector worldwide, and has the potential to make India an energy powerhouse,” said Jubin Varghese, one of the co-founders of the firm. The other co-founder is Ameya Gadiwan. The company secured an undisclosed funding round from Mumbai Angels Network this February. Its ambitions are huge. Varghese says: “The battery is the bottleneck in the adoption of electric vehicles. We are aiming to leapfrog batteries to the next stage and change the economics of electric vehicles and everything else associated with them now and into the future.” Mumbai Angels Network is an investment firm with a network of 300+ investors and more than 100 start-ups in its portfolio. The group has invested more than Rs200 crore in start-ups.
The battery is the bottleneck in the adoption of electric vehicles. We are aiming to leapfrog batteries to the next stage and change the economics of electric vehicles and everything else associated with them now and into the future
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BATTERY FIRMS
Others of the great and the good There is a profusion of mainstream and specialist battery manufacturers across India — many of these are offshoots of technology firms that provide other services. Included here are some of the larger firms as well as some of the smaller players. Base Corporation says it is one of India’s top five battery manufacturers, specializing in power solutions for automotive, industrial and at-home power solutions
LivGuard recently announced it plans to expand its product portfolio and will invest Rs60 crores in marketing expenditure for the 2019-2020 financial year
Aegan Batteries Aegan Batteries was founded in October 2010 at Bengaluru in the state of Karnataka. The firm says it is engaged in manufacturing and supplying a quality range of industrial batteries from a state-of-the-art manufacturing plant at Malur, 50km from Bengaluru. The firm recently announced it was in the process of setting up an R&D centre dedicated to research in lead-acid batteries along with acquiring the ISO 9001: 2008, ISO 14001: 2004 and TS 16949 certifications. Alf Batteries Alf Technologies (India) — better known through its brand name AKIYO — is a closely held limited company headquartered in Ahmedabad but with offices in New Delhi, Lucknow, Jaipur, Indore, Pune, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kochi. The company, which was incorporated in 2010, is into contract manufacturing and markets a wide range of lead-acid batteries from Hitachi on a pan-India level. In July 2016, Alf partnered Hitachi Chemical, part of the Japanese Hitachi group, to try and take a larger stake of the Indian automotive battery market — a sector dominated by Amara Raja and Exide Industries. The two said at the time that they aimed to take a 10% market share in the sector within three to five years and a projected turnover of Rs250 crore in the same time frame. The batteries sold in the Indian market were manufactured at Hitachi’s Thailand plant, which at the time had an installed capacity of 1.4 million units per year. Hitachi said it planned to expand the plant’s capac-
84 • Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook
ity to 1.9 million units per year by 2018. The firm said at the time there were no plans for a dedicated plant in India, due to a free trade agreement with Thailand. Its product range includes lead acid batteries for motorcycles, cars/four wheelers, tractors and agro-equipment, trucks and HVCs, inverters, UPS, solar and other stand-by power applications. Alf is a member of Battery Council International in the US and a member of the Confederation of Indian Industry and the Society of Automobile Engineers. Alf is also ISO 9001 Certified from TUV South Asia. AMCO Batteries AMCO Batteries is an automobile and commercial battery manufacturing company headquartered in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. It is a part of Amalgamations Group, one of India’s biggest light engineering groups in India.The product profile of AMCO includes automotive, inverter, genset and UPS batteries. Base Corporation Base Corporation says it is one of India’s top five battery manufacturers, specializing in power solutions for automotive, industrial and at-home power solutions. It was established in 1987. With its headquarters in Bangalore, Karnataka, it has international offices in China and Dubai, and is a TS16949, ISO-9001 and ISO-14001 certified company. Its products range from 2.5Ah to 200Ah for two-wheelers, automotive batteries, solar batteries, inverters, generators and UPS for both home and industrial usage. With
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Okaya says it is among the fastest growing battery brands in India, with an annual installed capacity of 6 million batteries and a nationwide network of more than 24,000 dealers and 1,350 distributors across India
HBL Power Systems says it has become the leading supplier of specialized batteries and power electronics in India and has a strong presence in several other countries
Southern Batteries makes a wide range of battery types and sizes and works in specialized markets
more than 1,600 employees and a network of 15,000 retailers, the firm says it reaches 204,000 new customers every month. Celtek Batteries/Microtex Founded in 1969 under the name AG Group, Mysore Thermo Electric Private Limited was a separator manufacturer which in the 1970s became involved in battery making. One of its branded batteries is Microtex. In 1989 the group traded under the name Celtek Batteries to manufacture lead acid batteries. (For further details of Celtek’s origins refer to the section on separators.) HBL Power Systems HBL NIFE Power Systems — formerly known as Sab Nife Power Systems — is a battery and power systems company based in Hyderabad. The company is a result of the merger in 1999 of Hyderabad Batteries (HBL) incorporated in 1977, and SAB Nife Power Systems, incorporated in 1986. The company says it has become the leading supplier of specialized batteries and power electronics in India and has a strong presence in several other countries. Sab Nife Power Systems was incorporated in 1988 by A J Prasad in a joint venture with Nife and began commercial production that year. In 1992, the company diversified into manufacturing UPS systems. In 1993, it also started manufacturing storage batteries including sealed lead acid batteries. In 1998-99, HBL and Pinaki Technologies was merged to make switch mode rectifiers in the Mahabubnagar district of Telangana. In 1999-2000, the company name was changed to HBL Nife Power Systems. LivGuard Energy LivGuard Energy offers inverters and inverter batteries, automotive batteries, residential solar solutions and stabilizers in India. The brand operates under the SAR Group, which has been trading for 30 years. The firm was set up Rakesh Malhotra, of the SAR Group, who also was a co-founder of Luminous. LivGuard says it has a strong foothold in markets such as Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Chandigarh, Orissa and southern markets Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala through 25,000 retailers. LivGuard recently announced it plans
86 • Batteries International • India 2019 Yearbook
to expand its product portfolio and will invest Rs60 crore ($8.6 million) in marketing expenditure for the 2019-2020 financial year. Okaya Power Okaya Power, founded in 1987, produces batteries for inverters, automotive, e-rickshaws, UPS and solar applications, as well as power backup, water purification, IT infrastructure and housing applications in India and internationally. It is best known for its power tubular batteries and has set an ambitious target to become the world’s largest power tubular battery manufacturer from India by 2020. Okaya says it is among the fastest growing battery brands in India with an annual installed capacity of 6 million batteries and a nationwide network of more than 24,000 dealers and 1,350 distributors across India. Okaya Power is a division of the Okaya Power Group of companies. This includes Okaya Power, Okaya Infocom, Okaya Energy Systems, Microtek International, Joos (a mobile phone battery firm), Nasaka (a water purifier) and others. Southern Batteries Southern Batteries manufactures lead acid tubular batteries, valve regulated lead acid batteries, flat plate batteries, traction batteries and automotive batteries under the brand name Hi-Power. The company manufactures a wide range of batteries from 20Ah-2000Ah in 2V cells, 20Ah240Ah in 12V Monoblock PP/HR, 10V, 8V and 6V ranges. The company has another manufacturing facility in Jigani, Bangalore. It says it has a prominent share in the solar, railways, telecommunication, UPS and inverter markets. It was established in 1980 by S R Pillai. Su-Kam Power Systems Su-Kam is an Indian power solutions provider rather than a battery manufacturer which sells in more than 90 countries. The company, which was established in 1988 by Kunwer Sachdev, provides power backup for domestic and industrial markets. Its products include solar charge controllers, solar power conditioning units, solar gridtie inverters, solar off-grid power systems, home inverters, home UPS, online UPS, line interactive UPS, battery chargers and battery equalizers. It sells through its network of 1,200 distributors and 25,000 dealers.
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