India's Renewable Energy Push: Solar, Wind and the Growing Role of Storage

India has expanded its renewable (clean, non-fossil) energy capacity sharply over the past decade, becoming one of the leading clean-energy economies in the world. According to official figures from the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, as of April 30, 2026, India's total installed solar capacity reached 154.24 gigawatts (GW), up from barely 2.8 GW in 2014. Total renewable energy capacity stood at 279.25 GW and total non-fossil capacity at 288.03 GW. Within solar, ground-mounted projects accounted for 117.36 GW and rooftop systems for 26.75 GW. (A gigawatt is a unit of power equal to one billion watts; the more GW installed, the more electricity those plants can generate.)

Wind power has become the second main pillar of this expansion, with installed capacity reaching nearly 52 GW by 2026. Major wind corridors run through Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Rajasthan and Maharashtra. Wind and solar complement each other: solar power peaks in daytime, while wind generation in several regions strengthens in the evening and during the monsoon. This solar-wind complementarity is increasingly important for keeping the electricity grid balanced. Behind this growth lies a set of government policy tools, including solar parks, production-linked incentives to boost factories, domestic manufacturing requirements, Green Energy Corridors for transmission, and large-scale tenders run by agencies such as the Solar Energy Corporation of India. Domestic manufacturing of solar panels, wind turbines, blades and towers has also grown, reducing dependence on imports.

This rapid rise brings a technical challenge. Solar power is intermittent, meaning it is not available all the time. It produces a lot of electricity in the afternoon when sunlight is strongest, but national demand often peaks in the evening, exactly when solar output falls away. As solar makes up a bigger share of supply, grid operators must manage a midday oversupply followed by an evening shortfall. This can cause transmission congestion, force some clean power to be wasted (called curtailment), and require thermal (coal-based) plants to ramp up and down quickly. The challenge is therefore not only to produce clean power but to keep the grid stable while doing so.

To address this, the Government of India and the Central Electricity Authority are placing energy storage at the centre of power planning. Storage lets surplus daytime solar energy be saved and released during the evening peak. According to the National Electricity Plan, 2023, India's storage requirement is projected at 82.37 gigawatt-hours (GWh) by 2026-27, rising to 411.4 GWh by 2031-32, and possibly to 2,380 GWh by 2047. This includes Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) and Pumped Storage Projects (PSP), where water is pumped uphill when power is cheap and released through turbines when power is needed. To push this along, the Ministry of Power's Energy Storage Obligation rises from 1 percent in financial year 2024 to 4 percent by financial year 2030, making storage a required part of renewable integration.

Looking further ahead, India's planning targets aim for 509 GW of solar, 155 GW of wind, and 174 GW (888 GWh) of energy storage by 2035-36, including 80 GW of battery storage and 94 GW of pumped storage, while coal capacity is retained for baseload and reliability. For aspirants, the main points are India's clean-energy figures and targets, the policy instruments driving them, the meaning of intermittency and curtailment, and why storage (BESS and pumped hydro) and grid strengthening are now seen as essential for India's energy security and climate commitments.