India Misses Renewable Energy Target As Wind Addition Slows
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India has once again missed out on the target capacity addition for a second consecutive financial year as wind energy and rooftop solar power sectors continued to falter in growth. Against a target addition of 14.45 gigawatts of grid-connected renewable energy between April 2017 and March 2018, India could manage only 11.75 gigawatts.
Solar
India’s Ministry of New & Renewable Energy had set a target to add 9 gigawatts of utility-scale solar power capacity in FY2017-18 and only just met this target. At the end of March 2018, India had an operational utility-scale solar power capacity of 20.5 gigawatts.
The country, however, missed out on the rooftop solar power capacity addition target. Against a planned addition of 1,000 megawatts, only 353 megawatts capacity was added. This took total operational rooftop solar capacity on 31 March 2018 to 1,064 megawatts.
Wind
Capacity addition in the wind energy sector was highly disappointing. The sector missed the capacity addition target for the first time in at least three financial years. Against a planned capacity addition of 4 gigawatts, only 1.76 gigawatts were added, taking the total installed capacity to just over 34 gigawatts.
Capacity addition targets in the FY2016-17 and FY2015-16 were surpassed by significant margins. The end of feed-in tariff regime across all states spelled doom for the sector. India has, however, managed to develop a very healthy pipeline of under-construction and to-be-auctioned wind energy capacity.
Past Trends
Capacity addition growth, in absolute terms, has been extremely lackluster in FY2017-18. In FY2015-16, the MNRE had set a target to add 4.46 gigawatts of grid-connected renewable energy capacity and actually added just over 7 gigawatts. In FY2016-17, against a target of 16.66 gigawatts just over 11.3 gigawatts were added.
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