India’s renewable energy story has so far been told largely in gigawatts. How much solar was auctioned, how much wind was added, how quickly capacity expanded. The next phase will have to be judged differently: not by how much capacity is awarded, but by how much clean power can actually find buyers and reach the grid when it is needed.
That shift is now becoming unavoidable.
Nearly 42 GW of renewable capacity already awarded through auctions is yet to secure buyers. Within this, around 17-18 GW is standalone solar, while another 14-15 GW was discovered at relatively high tariffs. The government is now asking renewable energy implementing agencies to examine whether the supply profile of these projects can be changed within the tariffs already discovered, including through the addition of battery storage.
This is more than an attempt to clear an auction backlog. It signals a fundamental change in what distribution companies want from renewable energy.
For years, plain solar was attractive because it was cheap, simple to procure and quick to build. But electricity demand does not disappear when the sun sets. As more solar capacity enters the system, the problem has shifted from scarcity of renewable power to its timing. Discoms increasingly want electricity that can be supplied beyond daylight hours and with greater certainty.
That explains why developers are voluntarily adding battery storage to older solar bids. A project that could supply only daytime electricity can become far more useful if some of that power is stored and delivered later.
But storage cannot rescue every project.
Renewable Energy Secretary Santosh Kumar Sarangi has acknowledged that a large number of plain solar bids may ultimately not be sold. That is an important admission. The answer cannot be to keep commercially weak projects alive indefinitely simply because they were once auctioned.
The new regulatory framework offers a sensible way forward. Under the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission’s July 2026 regulations, developers of eligible projects without power purchase agreements can exit without losing the bank guarantees furnished for connectivity. Where projects are no longer viable, a clean exit may be better for developers, transmission planning and the wider power system than years of uncertainty.
Cancellation, however, should remain the last option. Before reaching that stage, there is value in testing whether storage, a modified supply pattern or another commercially workable arrangement can make a project useful to discoms without reopening the discovered tariff.
The larger challenge is visible in the grid itself.
During the hottest months this year, around 11% of solar generation was curtailed. More than 8 billion kWh could not be absorbed by the transmission system during April-June, even as 63 billion kWh reached the grid. Nearly 21 GW of renewable projects currently have only part-time grid access.
These numbers expose the weakness of thinking about renewable energy only in terms of installed capacity. A megawatt that cannot be transmitted or sold when generated is very different from a megawatt that can reliably serve demand.
This is why batteries are moving from the margins of India’s energy transition to its centre. The country is estimated to require around 411 GWh of storage by 2031-32, while about 156 GWh is already under tendering or order-placement processes.
Auction design is evolving accordingly. Firm and dispatchable renewable energy, solar-wind hybrid projects and round-the-clock tenders are increasingly important. A recent 1,000-MW round-the-clock tender discovered a tariff of around ₹5.25 per unit, while offering 90% assured power availability between 6 pm and 10 am.
That tariff may be higher than plain daytime solar, but the comparison cannot stop at the headline number. Power available when demand is high has a different value from electricity that arrives only when the system is already flooded with solar generation.
India expects to require around $500 billion of renewable investment by 2030 and nearly $13 trillion by 2070. Capital of that scale cannot be deployed efficiently if projects are auctioned first and the search for buyers begins later.
The lesson from the stalled 42 GW is clear. India’s renewable transition has reached the stage where the quality of power matters as much as the quantity of capacity.
The next generation of auctions must therefore begin with the buyer’s requirement, the grid’s ability to absorb power and the hours when electricity is actually needed. Battery storage, hybridisation and firm supply should increasingly be built into that thinking from the start.
The era of chasing renewable gigawatts is not ending. But the more important race has begun: turning those gigawatts into dependable green electricity.
