India’s Solar Surge Faces Grid Bottlenecks Despite Ambitious Targets

Nuvama’s latest analysis highlights a massive shift in India’s power landscape, forecasting that renewable energy will dominate the grid as urbanisation and manufacturing expansion drive a 6% annual increase in total electricity demand. The firm estimates that the integration of green hydrogen and data center operations will require between 251GW and 406GW of new solar capacity by the 2035-2036 fiscal year. If these projections hold, solar’s share of the national energy mix is expected to climb from 28% in FY26 to 61% a decade later.

Government planners are already accounting for this transition, with the Central Electricity Authority’s Generation Adequacy Plan mapping a path toward 509GW of installed solar power. India previously hit a milestone by sourcing 50% of its electricity from non-fossil fuels five years ahead of schedule. Despite this momentum, the current grid infrastructure struggles to keep pace with the sheer volume of new renewable installations. This disparity has resulted in frequent clean energy curtailments, creating a logistical hurdle that could stifle the very boom the country is working to accelerate.