According to a report by the BBC on September 22nd, on one day in July this year, India’s renewable energy power generation briefly met more than half of its peak electricity demand. However, the media also noted that there are still challenges in India's grid development.
Regarding this situation, Sumanth Singh, CEO of ReNew Power, one of India’s largest clean energy companies, told BBC: “This indicates that renewable energy in India is no longer a marginal energy source on the periphery of the power system.”
Currently, coal-fired power plants provide 70% of India’s electricity supply. This is because they operate at higher load factors and have more operating hours than solar or wind energy sources. The BBC believes that India’s efforts to promote clean energy may have reached a critical turning point.
Ten years ago, India had only 4 gigawatts of installed capacity for renewable energy. Today, this figure has risen to 300 gigawatts. For a country that has long been considered highly dependent on high-polluting coal, this rapid transformation marks significant progress in decarbonizing its power grid.
However, these achievements have been greatly diminished due to some severe challenges. The most prominent issue is the insufficient capacity of the power grid: the pace of construction of renewable energy sources has significantly surpassed that of power transmission infrastructure.
Global Energy Think Tank Ember stated: "In the first quarter of 2026, transmission restrictions in India accounted for nearly two-thirds of the total electricity wasted from all renewable sources, with the total amount of wasted electricity reaching 300 GWh."
In short, this means that a significant portion of clean energy produced in India is wasted, due to the slow progress in building transmission lines. One-fourth of the cross-state projects have been delayed for more than a year.
Sinha said that the challenge lies in matching the construction speed of power generation projects with the expansion speed of the power grid: “Power generation projects can be completed within 18 to 24 months, but transmission may take longer, due to issues such as road rights, land acquisition, approval processes, and coordination among multiple agencies. This is an execution issue that becomes more prominent as the system scale increases.”
Energy economics research institute's Vivek Agarwal attributed this problem to "poor planning".
She told the BBC that when India adds 10 to 15 gigawatts of new capacity each year, the power grid can still absorb this additional capacity. But once the capacity increases further, the infrastructure will not be able to handle it.
It is reported that India’s renewable energy projects are concentrated in the remote northwestern states of Gujarat and Rajasthan, which further exacerbates the challenge of transmitting electricity when there is a shortage of the power grid.
Ember's analysts now believe that the increasingly dissonant relationship between fast-tracked power generation projects and slow progress in transmission infrastructure is a critical operational risk that threatens to derail China's 2030 goal of achieving 500 gigawatts of non-fossil fuel electricity.
A quick way to address this gap would be to establish battery storage systems at renewable energy hubs, so that electricity can be fed into the grid. However, the capacity of these storage systems has not increased. This is due to a rise in battery prices, shortages of raw materials caused by conflicts in the Middle East, and the depreciation of the Indian currency, which has increased the financing costs for Indian companies.
Gallger said, "A number of energy storage projects that were supposed to begin immediately have been cancelled.”
