India’s solar power capacity to reach 85 GW in June 2024 quarter

The Indian renewable energy sector has added 4.4 GW of new capacity during the first quarter of this financial year.

Solar power remains the mainstay of renewable new capacity addition and added about 3.7 GW during the first quarter of this fiscal year, while the wind power segment added 770 MW of new capacity. During the first quarter of the last fiscal year, the wind power sector added 1.1 GW of new capacity, which was about 1/4 of the total new capacity added to the grid during the period.

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As of June 30, 2024, the total grid-connected capacity of renewable energy was 148 GW. Of this, the share of solar power segment was 85 GW, followed by wind power at 47 GW and biomass at 1.4 GW. The share of small hydro power segment is 5 GW.

Of the total 85 solar capacity, ground installed solar capacity was 66.5 GW, while grid-stored solar rooftop was about 13 GW. Hybrid projects and off-grid solar segments accounted for 2.6 GW and 3.4 GW respectively.

“Installed solar capacity has increased 32 times from 2.6 GW in 2014 to 85.5 GW now. Technological innovations and innovative market mechanisms have been helpful in reducing overall costs. Vibhuti Garg, South Asia Director, Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), said solar is now the cheapest form of energy but is variable in nature, hence India needs to deploy flexible generation sources for better integration of renewable energy. Needed.

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Furthermore, while solar rooftop capacity has also increased, progress has been slow. He felt that India needs to introduce innovative financial mechanisms as high upfront capital cost is one of the major constraints.

In June 2024, about 3,200 MW of wind-solar hybrid and 500 MW of utility-scale solar capacity were allocated to various renewable energy developers. Additionally, Gensol Engineering secured GUVNL’s 250 MW/500 MW standalone battery energy storage system in Gujarat, according to JMK Research.