India Adds 35 GW Power in 2024, Solar Leads with 71% Share: Study

India added nearly 35 gigawatts (GW) of power capacity in 2024, setting a new record for the calendar year. According to the GEM study,  Solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity made up almost 25 GW (71%) of all additions across the power sector, a record annual capacity addition for any technology in India.

Despite the strong year, renewables only made up around one-fifth of the total increase in power generation in 2024, with fossil power contributing more than two-thirds. Accelerating the rollout of renewable sources is essential to reverse the rise in fossil generation and to meet India’s ambitious 500 GW of non-fossil power capacity by 2030, which requires annual deployment to double over the next five years. For now, despite the sharp rise, renewables have only made serious dents in incremental power demand, leaving base power demand dependent on fossil fuels.

Expanding Renewable Energy Deployment 

Replicating 2024’s annual wind and solar deployment to 2030 would expand India’s renewables fleet by around 80% to 378 GW. GEM’s Global Integrated Power Tracker shows an additional 24 GW of hydropower capacity slated to come online by 2030. That would leave about a 100 GW shortfall to India’s target of reaching 500 GW of non-fossil power capacity by 2030.

Closing this gap with wind and solar would require annual capacity additions to average 60% higher than the additions in 2024 or grow year-on-year at about 15%. Post-pandemic wind and solar growth rates have tracked slightly above this level. It suggested that renewables expansion in line with the 500 GW target is attainable if the recent pace of growth can be maintained. Such growth would see annual wind and solar additions more than double the record levels in 2024 by 2030.

Solar power propels capacity growth

India’s record year for capacity additions was propelled by solar photovoltaic technologies, which accounted for 71% of total capacity additions across the power sector and 86% of the 28.6 GW of renewable capacity additions in 2024. Solar PV additions in 2024 (24.5 GW) are more than those in 2022 and 2023 combined and mainly comprise ground-mounted utility-scale solar (75%). However, small-scale distributed solar also made impressive gains, spurred by a new government subsidy scheme for households that has seen 700,000 installations since its launch.

Wind capacity additions of 3.4 GW in 2024 were about a third higher than the average annual deployment over the last decade. But they fell below the record annual deployments of 2016 and 2017. Still, the steady pace of wind deployment saw cumulative operating wind capacity reach 48 GW by the end of 2024, overtaking large-scale hydropower to become India’s third-largest power source by operating capacity, behind solar and coal.

Coal Share Drops

The report indicated, that in 2024, coal’s share of total power capacity fell below 50% for the first time since the 1960s. Renewables alone will likely eclipse operational coal capacity within the next two years, if wind and solar capacity additions replicate similar record levels of deployment (~30 GW), and under-construction hydropower projects come online to schedule (~5 GW).

At similar levels to the 2024 deployment, solar will likely overtake hydropower to become the second-largest power source next year after coal. However, a significant uptick in renewables deployment is required for these sources to expand upon their current one-fifth share of total generation and to eat into coal’s dominance.