Sheru is a new generation energy storage company with a unique concept of cloud storage of energy. Sheru solves the problem of lack of storage by aggregating idle battery capacity to create a virtual energy storage platform. Power producers and utilities can store their energy virtually, on-demand, and on a pay-per-use basis. In an exclusive interaction with ETEnergyworld, the Founder Ankit Mittal shares a perspective on the company’s business model.
Tell us about your company and the idea behind it?
Big companies are interested in switching to renewable energy and electric vehicles to optimize their operation cost. It is very profitable for them. We founded Sheru to bridge the clear gap that exists between electric vehicles and the grid. EVs are important for the overall energy transmission, it is a big unification of the energy market.
Earlier with constant supply and volatile demand, electricity wastage was included into the price and the emissions were surmounting. With the ESGs, companies are now required to modulate power supply according to demand, which is very difficult to do without energy storage. On the supply side, renewables, primarily solar and wind, are getting popular. However, that just means that now the supply is also volatile.
With EVs in the picture, the demand is more volatile than ever. This fluctuation is causing more than Rs 47,000 cr of losses for the energy market. The power crisis happens because the utilities owe the independent power producers. This is a fundamental problem. A lot of energy storage capacity is going to come to the market in the form of EV batteries which can solve the storage problem. To manage the increased electricity demand from the EVs, the grid needs to be bidirectional.
Therefore, we built Sheru on that idea. Instead of a solution provider, we are a network. Our objective is to enable stakeholders with relevant technologies that they can build into their supply chains today itself. We can help Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEMs) to make their EVs bidirectional.
Please share your company’s growth outlook for the coming years.
Our objective is to scale our energy storage network to 1GW by the end of 2027. We have currently reached around 4MW/hr of capacity and we are growing at 50 per cent month-over-month. We are piggybacking on the growth of EVs as a lot of EVs are coming into the market increasing the storage capacity. We are very close to achieving our yearly goal of achieving 20MW/h capacity.
What challenges have you faced in adoption of the Vehicle to Grid (V2G) technology?
The good thing is that all stakeholders are very interested in this technology as it is a clear winner to achieve complete utilization of the vehicle. It is a great proposition for OEMs and the power sector. They can avoid spending billions of dollars to build energy storage infrastructure. Broadly, there is strong adoption from the stakeholders side. The major problem is semiconductor supply. As India does not have any domestic semiconductor producers, all of that is imported making the stability of the supply chain the biggest challenge.
Have you received enough government support to scale the V2G technology?
There is a lot of dialogue happening but there is also a resistance to change from the regulatory authorities. We believe that once the capability of the technology is demonstrated on a large scale, they will love to leverage this to solve their problems. However, no subsidies or other support have been announced for this technology.
What is the revenue model for Sheru?
The biggest challenge faced by renewable energy producers is that 80 per cent of the power they produce is sold to the government and the remaining 20 per cent to private businesses. These power producers are desperate to solve the losses incurred due to lack of energy storage capacity. However, energy storage does not make sense from a financial perspective as the utilization is only 20 per cent in a day. That is why a lot of energy storage companies went bankrupt in the US and Europe.
Our solution is these companies can procure energy storage space in a network of batteries rather than into an infrastructure, like a dropbox for energy. We give you a virtual interface where we slice and dice your power and store it in different batteries and give it back to you when needed. It is an aggregated warehouse. Revenue will be split 50-50 with the battery owner. The more EVs that come in, the more our energy storage capacity will go up. In India, we see three segments that have a lot of aggregate capacity – personal four-wheelers, intra city buses and battery swapping.