India has crossed a significant clean energy milestone, but experts say the challenge now is ensuring that renewable power can reliably meet demand beyond daylight hours.
The “research shows that the next frontier will be to scale flexible energy storage, along with large-scale and distributed renewable energy systems, to meet increasing shares of the evening demand with low-cost renewables,” said Disha Agarwal, Fellow at the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW).
According to CEEW, renewable sources met 50.02 per cent of India’s total electricity demand of 221.5 GW on July 6, marking the second consecutive July that the country crossed the 50 per cent threshold. The achievement came during one of India’s highest electricity demand periods, when heat and humidity push power consumption sharply higher.
The milestone reflects a changing electricity mix, driven largely by rapid growth in solar power.
India now has the world’s third-largest installed base of solar and renewable energy, with total renewable capacity reaching around 263 GW by early 2026. The Economic Survey 2026 said renewable capacity had crossed 51.93 per cent of the country’s installed power capacity by the end of December 2025, achieving the target years ahead of the original 2030 deadline.
The expansion has accelerated in recent years. Renewable capacity has roughly tripled since 2014, while FY26 alone added 51 GW, the fastest annual increase recorded so far. Solar energy has accounted for a major share of that growth, supported by India’s domestic expansion and its role in the International Solar Alliance.
Higher renewable generation this July was aided by strong solar output during a period of high electricity demand driven by monsoon humidity and persistent heat. However, renewables account for only about 26 per cent of electricity generation on average over the course of a year, reflecting seasonal and daily variations in output.
A separate paper by the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) points to the next challenge. It notes that while solar generation is abundant during the day, output drops sharply after sunset just as electricity demand rises, creating a gap that is currently filled by conventional power sources.
The report also says India’s existing solar capacity is not being fully utilised because large volumes of electricity cannot be absorbed by the grid when they are generated. It estimates that average daily solar curtailment in May 2026 was equivalent to enough electricity to power more than a quarter of Delhi for an entire day.
The EAC-PM paper says renewable capacity is expanding much faster than energy storage and other grid flexibility measures. Without corresponding investment in storage and transmission, it warns, grid stress will continue to intensify.
Meanwhile, rising cooling demand, industrial growth and expanding infrastructure are keeping pressure on the power system. Although India’s coal-fired power generation fell by about 3 per cent year-on-year in 2025, the government has also moved to expand coal-fired power capacity by 46 per cent from current levels by 2030, according to Reuters.
The July milestone demonstrates that renewable energy can supply half of India’s electricity demand during favourable conditions. The next phase, experts say, will depend on building enough storage and grid flexibility to sustain that performance when demand peaks after sunset.
