The Battery Show India 2026 closes in Greater Noida with 1,080 exhibitors, as IESA data shows 53 GWh of storage tenders cancelled

India's biggest battery gathering of the year finished on 24 October. The fourth edition of The Battery Show India ran from 22 to 24 October 2026 at India Expo Mart, Greater Noida, co-located with the 19th Renewable Energy India Expo and the second Energy Storage Summit India, all three run by Informa Markets in India. The organiser put the combined show at 1,080 exhibitors and 54,000 industry professionals, with Australia as official partner country, represented by 21 clean energy companies and 32 exhibitors.

The opening ceremony had Scotland's First Minister John Swinney and Australia's High Commissioner Philip Green on the dais, which tells you what this show has become. It is no longer a solar panel fair with a battery annexe. On the battery floor were CATL, EVE Energy, Envision, Epsilon, Saint-Gobain and iPower Batteries, with further exhibitors from South Korea, Japan, Germany and China.

What it means for the cells in your EV

The number that matters for anyone buying an electric car or scooter here is localisation. Speaking ahead of the show, Prajyot Sathe, research director for electric vehicles at Frost and Sullivan, said battery component localisation is currently at around 30 to 35 per cent for smaller components and could rise to 70 to 80 per cent in the coming years. He also put battery electric passenger car sales at around 1,78,000 units in 2025, against roughly 99,000 in 2024, with 1,80,000 to 1,90,000 expected in 2026.

So the cell is still largely imported. That is why CATL and EVE Energy take floor space in Greater Noida, and why a smaller Indian name like NASH Energy made a point of showing a made-in-India NE32140 LFP cell on 21 October, along with a 5 kWh e-rickshaw pack, two-wheeler packs built from 51.2V 45Ah modules, and 261 kWh and 500 kWh grid storage systems. NASH says its group can manufacture 90 per cent of the battery pack. Pack, not cell. Keep that distinction in mind when a brochure says Indian-made battery.

The pipeline is huge, the live capacity is not

The sceptical reading comes from the industry body that runs the storage half of this week, the India Energy Storage Alliance. Its H1 2026 India storage report, summarised in July, says installed battery storage went from 0.78 GWh in December 2025 to 8.7 GWh by June 2026, with 7.9 GWh commissioned in the first half alone and around 70 per cent of it from merchant projects outside tender routes. Against that, 281 GWh has been tendered cumulatively, 53 GWh of tenders has been cancelled, and only 3 per cent of tendered capacity is operational. The Central Electricity Authority's own figure is 888 GWh of storage needed by 2035 to 2036, of which 321 GWh is battery storage.

Domestic lithium-ion cell capacity is heading towards 110 GWh announced by 2030, helped by the ₹18,100 crore ACC PLI scheme. Announced is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

The Karnataka angle

Grid storage is not EV charging, but both pull from the same cell supply. Karnataka is already in the queue. KREDL floated a global tender for two standalone battery storage projects totalling 450 MW and 900 MWh, 250 MW and 500 MWh at Kushtagi and 200 MW and 400 MWh at Huliyurdurga, with bids closing on 28 September 2026 and viability gap funding set at ₹18,00,000 per MWh of contracted storage capacity. If those get built on time, the state's evening peak gets easier to manage, which is the hour most home EV charging happens.

For buyers, the practical takeaway from Greater Noida is modest. More Indian pack assembly, more Indian LFP cell claims to verify, and a storage pipeline that still has to prove it can be commissioned rather than cancelled.

Sources

• REI Expo 2026 to Bring Together 1,080 Exhibitors and 54,000 Professionals, Energetica India
• REI Expo 2026 and The Battery Show India Bring 1,400 Brands to Greater Noida, The Machine Maker
• The Battery Show India Highlights India's Growing EV and Energy Storage Market, The Machine Maker
• NASH Energy to showcase made-in-India LFP cell and energy storage solutions at The Battery Show India 2026, pv magazine India
• Five Big Takeaways From IESA's H1 India Storage Report, Saur Energy
• Karnataka Issues Global Tender To Build Two BESS Projects For 450 MW/900 MWh, Saur Energy
• REI Expo and The Battery Show India Open in Greater Noida, TimesTech