India's grid will lag renewable capacity by 40-50GW unless transmission and storage catch up, executives and researchers said at the Mint Sustainability Summit.
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The next phase of India's energy transition will depend on transmission expansion and large-scale storage, not just new solar capacity, executives and researchers said at the Mint Sustainability Summit 2026 in Mumbai on 29 July.
"India is clearly moving from building renewable energy assets to building a dependable energy system," Deepak Thakur, managing director and chief executive of Hinduja Renewables, said on a panel titled "Energy Transition 2.0: Green Power, Hydrogen & the New Energy Economy." The panel was part of the fifth edition of the summit.
"The projects which we are conceiving cannot be standalone solar and wind anymore; we have to talk about integrated portfolios," Thakur said. "This has to combine generation, storage, forecasting and transmission."
Investors have shifted their focus. Thakur said they now look at project evacuation, storage integration, operating capability and long-term reliability. Discoms are eyeing reliable power during peak demand periods, while data centres are signing contracts for round-the-clock supply. The combination pushes procurement toward contracts that bundle storage with generation, Thakur said.
Installed renewable capacity stands at 288.59GW, with solar at 162.15GW. The 2030 target of 500GW of non-fossil capacity assumes solar will contribute about 300GW. That works out to roughly 211GW of new non-fossil capacity over the next four years.
The grid is not keeping pace. Madhav Pai, CEO of WRI India, said the grid is going to lag 40-50GW behind generation capacity unless transmission additions accelerate.
"It's very clear that the grid is going to lag 40-50GW behind what we generate... To reduce this 40-50GW gap between generation capacity and transmission ability, I think just being able to make this information much more transparent, much more visible... can get the right attention to accelerate it," Pai said.
He called for greater transparency on delays in transmission capacity additions and on the expansion of behind-the-meter battery storage, meaning systems installed at consumer premises such as PM Surya Ghar rooftop solar beneficiaries and commercial and industrial users. Behind-the-meter installations could add 20% of the required battery energy capacity in the country, Pai said. Digital transformation is key to that expansion, he added.
The consequences of the lag are visible in power market prices. Over the past two years, solar output has pushed exchange prices to zero or near-zero on several occasions, and generation curtailment has increased. Discoms have offloaded surplus green power on exchanges at prices well below procurement costs, typically more than ₹2 per unit for renewable power and over ₹3 per unit for firm and dispatchable renewable energy (FDRE) and hybrid projects. FDRE projects combine renewable generation with storage to supply power on demand, and their procurement costs run higher than plain solar or wind.
The same grid strains are running up against demand from data centres for round-the-clock power. Power Grid Lags Behind India's $250 Billion Data Centre Push examined how the transmission network is falling behind that buildout.
Who pays for the fix is unresolved. Thakur said the additional cost would have to be borne by customers. Market platforms would have to be developed through regulatory frameworks to support large-scale storage adoption and ensure payment for these costs, he said. Pai said the added cost may have to be allocated in "socially responsible ways" across the value chain.
The storage and transmission questions also hang over the next stage of the transition, the move from electricity to green molecules. Derek M. Shah, managing director and chief executive of L&T Greentech, said the transition is not confined to the power sector.
"Beyond electricity, there are these chemical industries, oil and gas industries, fertilizers, refineries, mobility, and steel. There is a need to look into this. Transition is not only happening in the electricity sector," Shah said. "The decarbonization of refineries has started to happen. The oil marketing companies are coming up with their tenders to replace part of their grey to green hydrogen."
Green molecules such as green hydrogen and ammonia depend on renewable energy, Shah said, which ties their economics back to the same grid bottlenecks. He said concerns over the cost of green hydrogen overlook the longer supply periods these projects are built for. "In the long run, these are bound to be viable, and in about four to five years, green molecules would become cheaper than grey molecules," Shah said. He also pitched for norms mandating the use of indigenously developed electrolysers so the domestic industry grows.
Thakur said government support is needed to make green hydrogen commercially viable, with regulatory mechanisms aligned with renewable power obligations to create demand. Once demand is secured, mass-scale production by industry would bring prices down, he said.
Solar Energy Corporation of India has recently floated a tender for green ammonia, and the government plans a green methanol tender for the shipping industry, Shah said.
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