Mecpower, Navitas Solar Plan 5 GWh-a-Year BESS Plant in Gujarat
Mecpower Solutions and Navitas Solar plan a 5 GWh-a-year battery storage assembly plant in Karjan, Gujarat, due to start in FY 2027-28, but cells will at first come from outside suppliers.
2 min readAI-assisted
The proposed Karjan plant is company-announced; first container delivery is targeted for April 2027, according to a company statement.
Illustration (AI-generated)
Mecpower Solutions and Navitas Solar plan a 5 GWh-a-year battery energy storage system (BESS) manufacturing plant in Karjan, Gujarat, with operations expected to start in the first quarter of India's financial year 2027-28, Mercom India reported on Oct. 28.
According to Mecpower, construction has begun, including boundary work, and orders for production-line equipment and machinery have been placed, pv magazine India reported. The company targets completion by March-April 2027 and delivery of the first battery storage container in April 2027.
The plant is designed to turn out about 1,000 battery storage containers a year, in initial configurations of 5 MWh and 6 MWh per container. Those figures are consistent with the 5 GWh annual capacity. The systems are aimed mainly at utility-scale projects, including standalone storage and solar-plus-storage.
The planned Karjan plant would assemble cells, likely sourced externally at first, into containers for EPC and utility-scale projects, according to the companies.
Illustration (AI-generated)
Assembly and integration, not cell making
Setul Shah, a director at Mecpower Solutions, told Mercom India in an interview that the plant will concentrate on BESS assembly, system integration and engineering, not on localizing the whole battery value chain. The aim is to combine battery packs, racks, battery management systems, power conversion systems and energy management systems into complete storage products for utility-scale and commercial and industrial users.
Battery cells are likely to be sourced externally at first, Shah said, because domestic cell manufacturing capacity has not yet scaled enough to meet market demand. That makes this a capacity figure for containers, not for cells: the 5 GWh depends on cell supply that the companies have not named.
Why it matters for India's storage build-out
The output is meant to serve project needs across both companies, including engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) work and utility-scale renewable projects. Mecpower brings project development, engineering and execution; Navitas Solar brings integrated manufacturing experience. A captive source of containers shortens the path from tender win to delivery for two developers in a market where storage is driven by renewable tenders, peak power procurement and standalone storage tenders, according to Mercom India's project tracker commentary.
The plant also adds to a growing list of Indian assembly projects. Voltgrid News reported earlier on Vikram Solar's unit planning a 7.5GWh-a-year battery assembly plant in Tamil Nadu, and on India's downstream battery storage manufacturing capacity of 86 GWh.
What is not confirmed yet
Neither company has said which cell chemistry or cell supplier the plant will use, what the investment is, or which projects will take the first containers. The timeline comes from the companies' own statements, and the facility is described as proposed. Until the first container ships in April 2027, the 5 GWh is planned capacity, not operating capacity.
