The global energy transition set another record in 2025: 692 GW of renewables added worldwide, and for the first time more than 100 GW of battery storage installed in a single year. But the question that decides whether storage scales is not how much is built. It is what a battery actually earns.
For India, that question now has a four-year, data-backed answer.
VYQON Research analyzed every 15-minute clearing price and volume on the Indian Energy Exchange from April 2022 to March 2026 — 1,461 consecutive days across the Day-Ahead Market (DAM), Green Day-Ahead Market (G-DAM), High Price Day-Ahead Market (HP-DAM) and Real-Time Market (RTM) — cross-referenced with Grid-India’s national system-operations data. The result is the first long-horizon, block-level picture of storage arbitrage economics in the world’s fastest-growing power system.
What the data shows?
The duck curve has fully arrived. Mean midday prices collapsed 60 percent in four years, from ₹4.51 to ₹1.80/kWh, while evening prices barely moved — widening the evening-to-midday differential to ₹4.82/kWh. By FY26, nine percent of midday blocks cleared at ₹0.50/kWh or less: near-free solar energy on the exchange.
Storage revenue is large — and strikingly stable. A two-hour battery dispatching optimally in the DAM would have earned ₹4.5–5.5 million per MW-year in *every* one of the four years, through a fuel crisis, two price-cap cuts and a one-third fall in average prices. Arbitrage tracks the daily spread, not the price level — and the spread is structural, driven by solar.
Merchant now beats contracted. FY26 arbitrage of ₹4.43 lakh/MW-month for a two-hour system is roughly three times the ₹1.48 lakh/MW-month capacity charge discovered in India’s lowest 2025 storage tender — and arbitrage alone supports a breakeven battery cost of about USD 208/kWh, above prevailing installed costs.
Every market segment pays, differently. The Real-Time Market matches day-ahead value through 40 percent more cycling at thinner margins; the storage-eligible HP-DAM adds a ₹4.27/kWh premium precisely when the DAM hits its price cap.
Why it matters beyond India
India compresses into four years a transition other markets took a decade to trade: a duck curve emerging at ~15 percent renewable share, priced at 15-minute resolution, in a system adding demand at record speed. For developers, investors and policymakers across Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, the Indian record is a leading indicator — the spread arrives faster than planning cycles assume.
Inside the report
– The global storage build-out in numbers — 2025’s record year in context
– India’s renewable growth and the 47 GW / 236 GWh battery target
– The Indian duck curve: system data and price data, side by side
– All four IEX market segments explained, with four years of price history
– Arbitrage value by year, battery duration and market segment with full methodology
– Tender benchmarking, breakeven costs, and implications for developers, investors and regulators
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