New Delhi – India crossed 300 GW of non-fossil electricity capacity on 31 July 2026, and added a record 29 GW of solar and wind in the first six months of the year.
Renewable capacity alone stood at 291.73 GW at the end of July. The composition is heavily weighted to one technology: solar at 164.59 GW, wind at 58.14 GW, hydro at 57.24 GW, bio-power at 11.75 GW and nuclear at 8.78 GW.
Solar is doing nearly all the work
India installed roughly 27 GW of solar in the first half of 2026, up about 49 per cent on the 18 GW added in the same period of 2025. Rooftop installations under the PM Surya Ghar scheme drove a meaningful share of that.
Wind added around 6 GW across 2025-26 against 44.6 GW of solar. That imbalance is a system design problem rather than a success story, because solar and wind generate at different times and a grid leaning almost entirely on solar has a predictable evening shortfall.
Capacity is not generation
The 500 GW non-fossil target for 2030 is expressed in installed capacity, and capacity figures flatter solar. A gigawatt of solar produces far fewer units across a year than a gigawatt of coal, because it runs only when the sun does.
The honest measure of transition progress is the share of electricity actually generated from non-fossil sources, and that number lags the capacity share considerably. Both are worth reporting. Only one is usually quoted.
What decides the second half of the decade
Storage, transmission and distribution company finances, in that order. Without storage, surplus midday solar is curtailed rather than used. Without transmission, generation in Rajasthan and Gujarat cannot reach demand elsewhere. And without financially viable discoms, nobody signs long-term power purchase agreements at scale.
Source: Ministry of New and Renewable Energy capacity data to 31 July 2026.
