India’s Investment in Renewable Energy Helps Meet Record Demand

Historically India is one of the biggest energy consumers in the world, led only by China and the U.S. This year’s scorching summer does not help with temperatures reaching 50 degrees Celsius in some places in India.

With the global switch to renewable energy India too has invested heavily into wind farms and solar energy. Comparing the month of August of 2022 and 2023 the electricity generation from wind increased by 1.5 billion kWh and 1.1 billion kWh from solar. That is an increase of 16% and 14% respectively.

India also saw an increase in energy generation from traditional, mostly coal fueled units, of 3.3 billion kWh or +3%. That is mostly due to a better availability of fuel compared to last year.

Since the start of nationwide quest to increase energy production in 2021 India saw an overall rise in renewable energy capacity by 33 GW, that is a 34% increase. Renewable energy is obviously at the forefront of India’s future energy goals as 85% of all new capacity installed since the middle of 2021 were renewables.

Increasing coal production and delivery to energy producers has been a government priority in tandem, with the goal of guaranteeing sufficient fuel stocks for optimizing electricity output during the peak summer demand. Comparing the first half of 2023 to the same period in 2022, domestic coal output increased by 10%, or 46 million tons.

Although the quantity dispatched to power plants increased by 4% to 14 million tons, further significant increases were constrained by the rail network’s congestion.

The operational preparedness of coal-fired plants has been assured by increased fuel availability, allowing them to quickly start operations when the grid requests it. This has successfully prevented the network from experiencing the severe power shortages and outages that occurred in both October 2021 and April 2022.