Non-Hydro Renewable Energy capacity addition grew 61% – CEEW-CEF reports

New capacity addition of non-hydro renewable energy increased to 4.2 GW during the first quarter of FY23 compared to just 2.6 GW installed in the same period last fiscal, as per the latest edition of the CEEW Centre for Energy Finance (CEEW-CEF) Market Handbook released recently.

This is nearly a 61 per cent jump in new Renewable Energy (RE) capacity addition on a year-on-year basis. In addition to heightened investor interest in the sector, the sharp increase in capacity generation could also be attributed to the low base in the corresponding quarter when capacity installations took a hit due to the Covid-19-induced lockdowns.

Overall, RE accounted for 98 per cent of the total 4.3GW electricity generation capacity added during the quarter. Within RE, solar energy dominated, representing 89 per cent of the total 4.2GW of RE added.
This was partly on the back of strong demand for grid-scale and rooftop solar additions. However, wind energy capacity additions continued to lag at just 430MW. In terms of capacity auctioned, a significant 48 per cent of the 3.15GW of RE auctioned in the quarter comprised innovative procurement formats such as hybrid RE and floating solar.

Gagan Sidhu, Director, CEEW Centre for Energy Finance, said, “ Continued low share of wind capacity addition is a matter of concern as India’s power sector transition cannot be based on solar alone. However, there are also some encouraging signs. A significant 1,200MW of wind capacity was auctioned in Q1FY23. This is in addition to another 1,200MW of wind-solar hybrid that was separately auctioned in the quarter.

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