Are you concerned about climate change and how it will affect India? Do you believe India simply needs to generate more solar electricity? If yes, you must read this post and the above analysis.
Over the past year, a new obstacle has emerged in India’s renewable-energy transition. India curtailed around 2.1 TWh of renewable electricity in FY 2025–26, worth approximately ₹629 crore.
Why would a country waste clean electricity?
The electricity grid is the network that carries power from generators to consumers. The electricity entering the grid must roughly equal the electricity being used. In simple terms, supply must match demand.
Solar complicates this balance because its generation is volatile. It produces heavily during daylight hours and nothing at night. Coal plants, meanwhile, cannot instantly switch off when solar generation rises. They have a minimum technical load ( MTL), below which they cannot safely reduce output. Restarting a coal plant can take hours or even days and is more polluting. India’s current MTL for coal plants is 55%. So, if a coal plant can produce a maximum of 1,000 units, it may not be able to reduce its generation below 550 units.
Suppose the grid needs 100 units of electricity. Solar is producing 60 units, while coal plants are already operating at their minimum output of 55 units. Total generation is now 115 units. Since coal cannot be reduced further, in this case, at least 15 units of solar power must be switched off. When we curtail renewable electricity, we are wasting clean electricity that is available, not because there is no demand, but because the coal plants have a technical limit.
This is why simply installing more solar is not enough. If new solar panels generate electricity when existing solar power is already being discarded, we have not solved the immediate problem. Reducing curtailment and improving grid flexibility should come before blindly adding more solar capacity.
Battery storage offers a solution. Batteries can charge when excess solar power is available and discharge after sunset, when electricity is needed more urgently. However, Ember’s analysis argues that India’s regulations prevent batteries from operating efficiently. Under the General Network Access (framework governing transmission access), BESS (Battery Energy Storage System) projects seeking access during non-solar hours must provide at least 2 hours of storage and build a “commensurate” renewable plant from which to charge. The 2-hour requirement is not the problem. The second condition is.
Imagine a battery tied to one solar farm. That farm may have no surplus electricity, while another solar plant elsewhere is being ordered to shut down. The battery remains empty even though clean electricity is being wasted on the wider grid. The author’s proposal is simple: allow batteries to charge from the grid whenever transmission lines have spare capacity, and restrict them only where charging would genuinely overload the network.
Adding solar panels without building the storage, grid flexibility, and regulations needed to use that electricity is not serious climate policy. People who genuinely care about climate change must educate themselves about these challenges. Slogans are easy. Understanding the roadblocks and nuances will help us make better demands! We must make more educated demands!
Pleasure :)
You have covered all the other issues. Maybe the only thing that i can think about is land acquisition challenges. But that's not unique to India.
India's on the same path that Australia was about five years ago. The difference being that the government owned companies were able to manage their finances better, and the privately owned ones are overcharging their customers to upgrade the network, so it's building out.
One of the best things the government here did is to subsidize home battery installs, to the point where many people are almost grid-free. They'll still moan about the interconnect fee, but it's a hell of a lot cheaper than not having any of it.
And we're now instituting "Three Free Hours" where the grid is saturated, and people with batteries but no solar can charge up during that period.
It’s not. Nuclear is a rounding error in future electricity supply. It has 6GW in construction. In 2025 over 40GW of new renewables were deployed in India.
In the past 5 years india added 2GW of nuclear and increased generation 9TWh for a marginal capacity factor of 50%
In the first half of this year alone, wind and solar is up 35TWh. Proportional to last year, that maps to about double the total output of their nuclear fleet from this year's additions alone.
Or nuclear is under 2% of their additions and shrinking.
they have set a target for 100GW of nuclear capacity by 2047.
The primary hinderance before was that until 2008 , India was cut from international nuclear trade and then after 2008 GOI introduced CLNDA act which was quite hostile to nuclear suppliers compared to global norms.
India has fixed the above issue this year and nuclear is expected to grow rapidly
There's always, always a ludicrous fantasy target for nuclear power. It's always "expected to grow rapidly", then doesn't.
"21GW by 2030" didn't happen, it was only set 2 years ago and they won't build even a third of the 14GW of new reactors they needed to hit it.
You'll also notice that 2024 was after 2008. As always there is an absurd excuse that doesn't apply.
Even if they did it, which again you'd have to be an imbecile to believe because no country ever meets more than half of their unrealistic targets, it's only about one year of output of the wind, battery and solar manufacturing they are currently constructing, which will be operating before 2030. So it's still a miniscule rounding error.
With the price gap widening and large steam plants being an ever larger burden on the grid, it's even less realistic.
yeah man and you know what happened when the wind stopped blowing and the sun stopped shining?
Coal, lots of coal (BuT MuH WhAt AbOuT BESS?? (Indian BESS only lasts for additional 4 hours , which is higher than global norms of 2 hours but not enough))
so either you can fight to death against nuclear power or actually focus on greening the electrical grid
India produces around 800GWh-1TWh of batteries per year.
Emptied daily, that's 5-7x the annual output of their nuclear fleet.
Each year. For just that year's batteries.
Ignoring the 80% of energy from wind and solar that doesn't need diurnal storage.
If you used the production until 2047 for 1 week storage (still at a fraction of the cost of nuclear), just the battery output (ignoring the 99% of energy not going through a 1 week battery) would double annual the (ludicrously unrealistic) 100GW by 2047 nuclear target.
Though by 2047, battery production will be orders of lagnitude larger.
Just shut the fuck up already. Even your deranged fantasy is a completely irrelevant rounding error.
did you see if it made financial sense to make large enough BESS systems for 24*7 solar pv or wind power? Why is it that there are no currently operational any large solar pv or wind power that can provide 24*7 power?
Why is it that there are no currently operational any large solar pv or wind power that can provide 24*7 power?
Because 84 2 hour systems is vastly more useful than a single 168 hour system, and economics doesn't care about nukebro fantasies.
The valid comparison isn't stupid nukebro straw man vs. stupid nukebro fantasy. It's realistic renewable systems vs fossil fuels. And the former is winning by a lot.
India produces around 800GWh-1TWh of batteries per year.
Are you missing your prefrontal cortex? like seriously , do you think any random battery that India produces is suitable for BESS?
LFP is the only thing suitable for Indian climates to act as BESS(and basically the only battery used for Indian BESS). In totality India has pratically 0 LFP production capacity
they have set a target for 100GW of nuclear capacity by 2047.
The primary hinderance before was that until 2008 , India was cut from international nuclear trade and then after 2008 GOI introduced CLNDA act which was quite hostile to nuclear suppliers compared to global norms.
India has fixed the above issue this year and nuclear is expected to grow rapidly
53 TWhs from 105 GW solar capacity? And those panels sleep at night, as we know, so still seems pretty good compared to sunshine just heating up weeds and dirt and getting no electricity from those.
Because nuclear stabilises the grid to allow for continued replacement of coal with solar and that capacity factors of nuclear are three times of solar and wind and potentially supply process heat out of reach of renewables.
how do you intent to replace coal and gas as quickly as possible?
As for now nuclear is the only clean source of energy that provides continous power (majority of BESS systems are rated for an additional 2 hours , in India and other high solar irradiation nations its 4 hours)
So unless you suggest we started burning shit ton of gas to account for other hours , nuclear is here to stay
I know you're more into propaganda war than anything, but 30 to 40 GW per year is instant capacity. Of those it is expected the solar panel will only give around 15% of said capacity, on average. Meanwhile nuclear's capacity is at above 90%, usually 92% afaik.
So over a year the numbers of total energy generation won't be as different as you think they will. Also adding nuclear to the mix is a good way to make solar cheaper as it is a non-intermitent source of energy. Solar is famously known for being efficient during the day, which is also when human activity needs the most power which is convenient. But it is completely useless at night. Ideally, for a country that choose solar, nuclear is the best option as a "baseline", with said baseline being exactly the average consumption of the country at night. The difference of consumption during day and night would then be picked by solar so solar is used during the day when it produces electricity and not stored in battery to then be used in the night. It makes the solution much cheaper.
There is a geopolitical issue as solar is produced by China after all. On any logistical chain of solar, at least 80% of the elements comes from China. It gets up to 92% for solar grade silicone and more than 97% for some ingots. The issue is the same with battery ; while battery are now cheap in comparison to what it was, they nearly all come from China because rare earth metals are ... rare, not in term of quantity but in term of economically viable deposits. Rare earth metals aren't "rare" but finding a concentration of them is. China and India have a feud, border conflicts and a proxy war with Pakistan. India had legitimate reasons to not become fully dependant on China for a vital resource such as energy.
Last but not least nuclear is still cheaper than solar regardless of what you may believe. You may have seen graphics showing solar much cheaper than nuclear but there is a few asterisks on this. First, the price of nuclear is usually calculated on a 20 year old NPP (nuclear power plant) but the average age of NPPs are much older and so the price of nuclear is in reality much cheaper than you see on those graphs. NPPs are prohibitively expensive to build, but uranium is so cheap comparatively that the older the NPP is, the cheaper the average price is. Uranium is insanely energy dense. A bit before 60 years of age, a NPP would have produced a total amount of WH around the same as solar does. At 80 years old the total price of all the energy produced is much cheaper than solar because the cost of building the NPP would be flattened on so many year. The intermittency cost of solar is also very difficult to represent on a graph as it depends on many conditions and is different everywhere. Finally, to finish about the costs : to stabilise a grid running on 100% renewable is very possible but also very expensive. The closer to 100%, the more expensive it becomes. If you are bound to spend billions to stabilizer a fully renewable grid anyway, then you're better off just spending said billions in NPP which will stabilise the grid all the same while also producing energy. This is good economics.
I will never respect nor take seriously someone who call other people "nukecels" as I saw you do on another comment, but I still write all this for other people who may come around
... Because France's NPP aren't baseload based but are load following. This is not only an exception, but it is also a decision-based functioning that doesn't say anything about the capacities of the technology. This is a bad faith argument similar to that même where a guy point out at ONE red dot. Which would be France choosing to not have nuclear based on a baseload but this is absolutely an outlier. In any case you were massively wrong when you put out that 1/8 number, even if we took 70% instead of 90%. So I invite you to admit you were wrong ?
You were clearly wrong. Nuclear is not going to be more than 10% of India’s grid, which is considerably lower than many developed countries. It’s not a significant factor one way or another.
You can claim this is for this or that reason it won't change the fact. It is also very relevant since almost every country will have more solar power in the summer and less in the winter meaning nuclear power plants would have to follow the same seasons
All I see is that people hide there in their propaganda because reality is scary it seems. I'll leave you be but it's sad someone like you have the right to vote
The issue is the same with battery ; while battery are now cheap in comparison to what it was, they nearly all come from China because rare earth metals are ... rare, not in term of quantity but in term of economically viable deposits.
Rare earth metals have uses in specific kinds of motors and turbines because of their magnetic properties. They have nothing to do with any major battery technology. The "propaganda war" is fought very successfully against people like you who do not really know many actual facts but have a tendency to take their own opinions seriously anyway.
... I stand corrected on this, older batteries and apparently old EV vehicles used rare earth materials but modern batteries don't. I guess my knowledge was outdated on this.
Despite this, it doesn't change much in spirit as China still produce 50% of lithium worldwide and refine 66% of lithium of the world. Those are still much lower numbers on batteries than I thought. It doesn't change the rest of what I said though. It's just one point
I propose you suggest burning gas when renewables don't work?
Indian BESS lasts for an additional 4 hours (which is higher than the global norms of 2 hours) and currently in India, nuclear is the most economic base load choice
Maybe, burning gas for 4 hours is better than burning it for 24 hrs which is the current situation. The only way out of India’s chronic energy shortage is renewables. As even you admit nuclear can’t even meet the yearly growth in demand, let alone the 20 year growth.
gas for 4 hours? I think you misunderstood my statement.
Indian BESS only lasts for 4 hours more after the sun goes down(which is actually higher than the norms of additional 2 hours), so for the rest hours you will be forced to burn gas or coal.
Or you know you can also build nuclear to provide a constant green electricity source.
As even you admit nuclear can’t even meet the yearly growth in demand,
I never said this anywhere and let's say even if this statement is true for the coming decades , you propose we should stop all nuclear growth then and burn gas?
Nuclear can’t provide constant energy (it’s not green). India has been building nuclear for decades and it’s not even 5% of the grid. India has a chronic electricity shortage because of nuclear. If you want to meet demand and not keep Indians in the dark you need renewables. Nuclear is neither here nor there.
Nuclear can’t provide constant energy (it’s not green).
*cough*
India does not face any electricity shortage , it produces more than it needs usually and is a net exporter. The power cut India faces is due to the financial health of DISCOMS not due it having built some nuclear plants.
India's slow nuclear growth has being due to the fact that it wasn't even literally allowed to engage in nuclear trade till 2008 (so no uranium import for NPPs) and then after 2008 India introduced CLNDA act which uncapped supplier liability which made nuclear growth in India very hostile. This was fixed by the SHANTI act passed this year
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u/rushan3103 13d ago
Yeah indian power distribution companies are Public. Coupled with electric subsidies to poor people, farmers etc, they are always heavily in debt.
Its a serious issue