IndiGrid, India’s first and largest listed power sector infrastructure investment trust (InvIT), today announced that it has deepened its partnership with British International Investment (BII), the UK’s development finance institution and impact investor, and the Norwegian Climate Investment Fund, managed by Norfund, to form a new platform, EnerGrid. This platform will focus on bidding and developing greenfield transmission and standalone battery energy storage system (BESS) projects in India.
According to the latest estimates released by Central Electricity Authority (CEA), India will require an additional 170,000 circuit kilometers of transmission lines and 47 GW of BESS capacity over the next eight years to facilitate evacuation of its growing generation capacity.
Earlier this fiscal, IndiGrid announced the first phase of this partnership, under which BII and Norfund (through KNI India AS, Norfund’s joint venture with KLP, Norway’s largest pension company) invested in three of IndiGrid’s existing greenfield transmission projects.
With the EnerGrid platform, IndiGrid, BII and Norfund, alongside KLP through KNI India AS, have committed around $300 million, with each partner contributing around $100 million. This capital will enable EnerGrid to target projects worth around $1.2 billion over the next few years. Post commencement of commercial operations, these projects will be fully acquired by IndiGrid at a pre-agreed enterprise value.
“This will be a symbiotic partnership where IndiGrid will lend its pole position in and understanding of the nuanced Indian energy sector, and BII and Norfund will provide access to capital from global Development Financial Institutions and the Norwegian private pension fund,” stated IndiGrid.
Harsh Shah, chief executive officer, and whole time director of IndiGrid, said this partnership will ensure that while IndiGrid continues to look for synergistic brownfield projects to acquire, we can also meaningfully create a growth pipeline for us in the under-construction space.
