Reportage on a planet without equitable or sustainable development.
Caught in the power maze: India’s discoms battle solar’s growing costs
As the first part of this series said, India’s solar sector is settling into ebullience. Recent tenders for round-the-clock (RTC) renewable power have netted prices comparable to that of coal, suggesting that the sector has bested its old bugbear of intermittency.
The country is also seeing a massive expansion in solar manufacturing — from 10 GW in 2021 to 60 GW now. With more capacity addition in the works, the country’s solar manufacturing capacity is expected to touch 110 GW by 2025-26.
While a part of this production might be shipped to countries like the USA, much will be deployed within India. As mentioned in the first story in this series, a senior advisor to the Indian government told CarbonCopy that if India improves its processes for land acquisition and transmission, the country could more than double its current installed solar power capacity from the current 81 GW by 2030.
The question that needs to be asked here is—Is India ready for 160 GW of renewable power? The answer to that question extends beyond land acquisition and expansion of transmission lines. Land can be acquired, as projects like Karnataka’s Pavagada Solar Park have shown, through leasing. Additional transmission lines can be laid as well.
Instead, the primary challenges to India’s solar expansion come from two other fronts. One, already discussed in our report yesterday—the high cost of Indian modules. Two, the unequal distribution of risks between developers and discoms.
I am an Indian journalist with interests in energy, environment, climate and India’s ongoing slide into right-wing authoritarianism. My book, Despite the State, an examination of pervasive state failure and democratic decay in India, was published by Westland Publications, India, in January 2021. My work has won the Bala Kailasam Memorial Award; the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award; five Shriram Awards for Excellence in Financial Journalism; and, more recently, been a finalist at the True Story Award and GIJN’s Global Shining Light Awards. Write to me at despitethestate@protonmail.com.
“Westland closure: Titles that are selling fast and a few personal recommendations,” by Chetana Divya Vasudev, Moneycontrol. (Because this happened too. In February, a year after DtS was released, Amazon decided to shutter Westland, which published the book. The announcement saw folks rushing to buy copies of Westland books before stocks run out.)
Fractured/Earth 
Leave a comment