India's solar capacity reaches 60 GW; up 10 GW in 9 months

India's cumulative installed solar capacity has reached 60 Gigawatt (GW), following the addition of 10 GW of solar power in the first nine months of 2022. The capacity additions were higher by 35% when compared to 7.4GW installed in the first nine months of 2021. In the first nine months of this year, solar contributed 76% of overall new power capacity installed in the country -- about 12 GW, says an analysis by Mercom Capital India, a renewable energy specific global data and research firm.

It says utility scale solar contributed maximum to the capacity addition, 9 GW, a 45% increase when compared to 6.1 GW in 2021. While 88% of the installations were utility scale, roof-top solar contributed only 12%. At present, the country has a utility scale project pipeline of over 58 GW of tendered projects and another 46 GW of tendered projects are awaiting auction.

In the third quarter, the capacity addition was slow, as only 2.7 GW were added, a 32% decline compared to the same quarter period of last year. However, with over 10 GW added in the first nine months of the year, India is likely to surpass the last year record of 13 GW in 2021, according to Mercom's data.

India's ambitious target is to reach 500 GW of renewables by 2030 and out of this, solar is expected to contribute 280 GW and 140 GW from wind power. That will require a capacity addition of 30-40 GW of solar power every year in the coming years to reach that target.

Mercom data says Rajasthan leads the capacity addition with total large scale solar photovoltaic  (PV) installations crossing 14 GW, accounting for 27% of overall installations in the country, followed by states like Karnataka and Gujarat. Over 50% of solar installations in the last quarter were in Rajasthan.

The average system cost of large scale solar projects during Q3 of 2022 was slightly up by 0.4% QoQ, though average system cost was up by 7.5% YoY. This is mainly because large scale solar system costs have been rising for nine quarters in a row, mainly due to raw material price rise in global markets like China, from where most Indian project developers source their equipment.