CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu government on Thursday signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with solar energy solutions provider Vikram Solar for a battery energy storage systems (BESS) manufacturing plant at the SIPCOT industrial park in Gangaikondan in Tirunelveli district.
The project will bring Rs 15,037 crore in investment and generate 2,670 jobs, an official release here said.
The agreement was signed in the presence of Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay at an event convened by the Industries, Investment Promotion and Commerce department at the Secretariat. It marks one of the largest single investment commitments secured by Vijay’s TVK-led government.
The BESS facility is not Vikram Solar’s first initiative in Tamil Nadu. The company already operates solar photovoltaic (PV) module manufacturing units at Oragadam and Vallam (Sriperumbudur), and has built a separate integrated production campus for solar PV cells and modules at Gangaikondan itself – a plant it began commissioning earlier this month, with the first module rolling off the line.
That facility, spread across roughly 6,00,000 sq ft, is designed to eventually house module, cell, wafer and ingot production as part of the company’s push towards a fully vertically integrated manufacturing base. The battery storage plant extends that strategy into energy storage.
Vikram Solar’s subsidiary, VSL Powerhive, is separately developing a 5 GWh BESS manufacturing unit at Oragadam under a board-approved Phase 1 capital outlay of roughly `4,371 crore, part of a longer-term plan for 30 GWh of combined battery cell, module and BESS capacity.
The Gangaikondan MoU signals that Tirunelveli, rather than Oragadam alone, will now anchor a significant share of that expansion – reinforcing the district’s transformation from a peripheral industrial location into one of the state’s more concentrated clean-energy manufacturing corridors, alongside the Tata-backed TP Solar plant inaugurated in the same SIPCOT estate earlier this year.
Industries Minister S Keerthana; Chief Secretary M Sai Kumar, IAS; Additional Chief Secretary for Industries, Investment Promotion and Commerce, T Vijayakumar; Deepak Jacob, Managing Director and CEO of Guidance Tamil Nadu, the state’s nodal investment-promotion agency; and Vikram Solar Chairman and Managing Director Gyanesh Chaudhary, accompanied by senior company executives, were present on the occasion.