FY2020 solar and wind installations fell short of the target by 26%

As per MNRE, in FY2020 (April 2019 till March 2020), about 5.7 GW of new utility-scale solar capacity was added in India. This is about 24% lesser than the government target of 7.5 GW set for this year. Compared to previous year installations, FY2020 installations are also marginally lesser (~1%). In FY2020, Rajasthan added a maximum capacity of 1.8 GW, followed by Tamil Nadu with 1.3 GW addition and Karnataka with 1.1 GW addition. Together these three states contributed about 74% of all utility-scale solar installations in India in FY2020. Neyveli Lignite Corporation (NLC), SB Energy, and ReNew were the leading project developers to add maximum solar capacity in FY2020.

On the wind side, in FY2020, about 2.1 GW of new wind capacity is added, which is about 30% lesser than the Government target of 3 GW set for FY2020. Compared to previous year installations, FY2020 wind installations are about 31% higher. Gujarat led the installations with the commissioning of 1.4 GW of new wind projects, followed by Tamil Nadu (335 MW) and Maharashtra (206 MW). Inox, SembCorp, Mytrah, ReNew, and Greenko were the leading players who added maximum wind capacity in FY2020.

Figure 1: State-wise capacity solar and wind installation in FY2020

Source: MNRE, JMK Research

In the last quarter of the FY2020 (Jan- Mar 2020) about 715 MW of new solar capacity and 189 MW of new wind capacity was added. These numbers are significantly lesser than the JMK Research projections of more than 3 GW of new solar capacity and 1 GW of wind capacity expected in this quarter. One of the reasons for the delay in the commissioning of projects can be the impact of lockdown in China first (starting Jan 2020) and then in India due to the COVID-19 issue. Next quarter (Apri- June 2020) also we can visibly see the impact of COVID-19 because of which significant delays are expected in the construction activity as well as commissioning schedule of solar and wind projects.