India’s Installed Power Capacity Twice Its Peak Demand: Singh

Union Power Minister RK Singh said today that India’s total installed electricity generation capacity is now almost double its peak demand. He also boasted that due to the transformation of the Indian power sector, the export of power to neighboring countries became a reality. 

The minister said, “Today, India has an installed capacity of 421,000 MW. It all happened with the collective and stringent efforts of the power and energy sector of the country. A key achievement was installing our electricity generation capacity, which is close to double the peak demand, connecting the country into one integrated grid running on one frequency.” 

He also said that over 21 million homes got connected to the power supply in just 18 months, making it the largest and fastest expansion of access in the world of the power sector, according to the International Energy Association (IEA).

“India has made significant progress in energy in the last nine years. The country has transformed from a power deficit to a power surplus and has also achieved its NDC target of 40% of the installed electricity capacity from non-fossil energy sources nine years ahead of schedule,” he said. 

The minister said that in the sphere of the renewable energy sector, India surpassed several hurdles and has achieved a milestone success by incorporating 64.3 GW of solar capacity, which is 23 times of capacity installed as of March 31, 2014.  

He also said that the renewable energy sector has further aided the success by installing 5.3 lakh solar pumps to farmers, which is 45 times the total pumps installed on 31.03.2014. 

“Increasing the share of renewable energy (excluding large hydro) in the electricity mix from 6.4% in 2013-14 to 12.5% in 2022-23 was another milestone,” he said. 

He also said that one key initiative was reducing the solar tariff from over Rs 6/ unit in 2014 to bringing it less than Rs. 2/unit (Rs 1.99/ unit) in 2020-21.

“We have installed indigenous solar cell manufacturing capacity of 6 GW/ annum in the country in the last nine years and increased wind turbine manufacturing capacity by 1.5 times, from 10 GW/ annum in 2014 to 15 GW/ annum in 2023. We also saw increased FDI in the renewable energy sector increasing by 3.7 times, with FDI of USD 11.1 billion coming in last nine years as compared to FDI of USD 3.0 billion received as of 31.03.2014,” he added.