India’s solar initiative is gaining traction, but grid and storage issues still exist: Parl Panel
New Delhi: Despite playing a key role in reshaping India’s renewable energy sector over the last decade, the Centre’s National Solar Mission has fallen short of its targets.
A Parliamentary Standing Committee report tabled on Monday noted that against the revised goal of achieving 100 GW of solar capacity by 2022, installations stood at about 54 GW at the end of the mission period. Since then, capacity has more than doubled to 116 GW by June 2025, placing India as the world’s third-largest solar power producer. However, solar still contributes only around 26 per cent to actual electricity generation due to its intermittent nature.
It further noted that while solar capacity expansion has been impressive, significant challenges remain in transmission infrastructure, energy storage, and implementation of key schemes. Consequently, India has revised its target for scaling up solar capacity to 292 GW by 2030, as part of its broader target of 500 GW from non-fossil fuel sources. The PM Surya Ghar: Muft Bijli Yojana aims to solarise one crore households with rooftop installations by 2026–27 and was launched in February 2024 with a financial outlay of Rs 75,021 crore. As of June 2025, over 50 lakh applications were received, and 16.4 lakh households have already been solarised. Also, more than 1,174 MW of solar capacity has been installed on nearly 45,000 government buildings.
Under the PM-KUSUM scheme, around 14 lakh solar pumps have been installed against a target of 49 lakh. However, achieving the targets for decentralised solar plants has been slow due mainly to land-related constraints and discom-linked issues, the committee noted. Utility-scale solar development is still being undertaken under the Solar Park Scheme, where 39.96 GW has been sanctioned over 55 solar parks in 13 states. However, so far, only 12.2 GW has been commissioned.
Large-scale projects are still being pushed by major private players like Adani Green Energy, including the 30-GW Khavda solar park in Gujarat.
Transmission infrastructure remains a key bottleneck. The committee estimated that India would require an additional 257 GW of transmission capacity by 2030 to effectively integrate planned renewable energy. The Green Energy Corridor project faced delays in both Phase I and Phase II due to land acquisition challenges, right-of-way disputes, and environmental clearances.
Another major concern is energy storage. From the approximately 5-5.5 GW of storage capacity available currently, India would need close to 60.63 GW by 2030 to manage the intermittency in solar power. The government has started ordering the integration of storage systems in new solar projects. While close to 44 GW of solar projects remain in the bidding stage, mainly because of the financial strain on discoms and their reluctance to enter into long-term contracts.
The committee has called for stricter enforcement of RPOs to ensure assured offtake. The report underlines the fact that unless these structural challenges, ranging from transmission and storage to land acquisition and the financial health of discoms, are resolved in a time-bound manner, India may be unable to achieve its ambitious climate commitments for 2030 and its net-zero target for 2070.
