India’s Grid, Not Its Generation Capacity, Is Becoming the Real Climate Bottleneck
The MNRE data makes one point uncomfortably clear: India’s renewable generation is accelerating, but the grid is not modernising fast enough to handle it. Monthly capacity additions in 2024–25 were overwhelmingly renewable, between 1.11 GW and 5.42 GW every month, almost entirely solar and wind. Thermal additions remained flat or even saw declines in some months.
This imbalance reveals a crucial tension. India is scaling renewable capacity faster than its transmission network, storage capacity, and balancing reserves can absorb. Solar-heavy states like Rajasthan and Gujarat are reporting curtailment pressures, even as they add the most new capacity.
Grid bottlenecks manifest in three ways:
1. Congestion
Renewable-rich states produce more energy than their internal grid can move. Without new corridors, excess power gets stranded.2. Curtailment
With no storage and limited evacuation, DISCOMs cut renewable output during oversupply windows — especially midday solar peaks.3. Balancing stress
Thermal plants still shoulder last-minute balancing because storage hasn’t scaled.India’s renewable transition has outpaced grid reform.
The irony is: India has solved the hardest part — deployment. But without a transmission surge, the country will hit a ceiling where adding more solar and wind will no longer increase actual clean electricity consumed.
The next five years must prioritise Green Energy Corridors 2.0. Massive storage procurement. Flexible thermal reforms, Regional balancing markets
India does not have a generation problem. It has a grid problem. And that problem will define the success or failure of the next 200 GW.