Highlights
80%
India’s non-solar electricity demand being met by thermal power
14.5%
Highest share on wind in India’s power grid in non-solar hours, if 2022 wind targets were met
100 GW
Projected contracted wind capacity of 21 Indian states by 2030
About
This report discusses the role of wind in India’s energy landscape in 2030 and beyond. It highlights key development in the wind sector and their implications for the sector’s growth. The report examines the complementarity of wind and solar in India, demonstrating how their diurnal and seasonal patterns can work together to create a more balanced and reliable renewable energy grid. It also addresses how overcoming current challenges in wind energy could unlock further potential for India’s energy transition. Additionally, this report provides data-driven insights on how increasing wind capacity can help reduce reliance on costlier energy storage solutions or thermal generation, ensuring non-fossil fuel electricity supply during non-solar hours.
Executive summary
Catching the wind: boosting capacity benefits India on multiple fronts
Ramping up year-on-year wind installations by 22%, will not only help India meet NEP14 targets, but also help leverage its complementarity with solar to supply the demand during non-solar hours, potentially reducing the balancing needs through storage.
Ruchita Shah Electricity Policy Analyst, Ember
Wind energy’s complementarity with solar is crucial to addressing India’s increasing clean energy needs during non-solar hours. By planning to contract over 100 GW capacity by 2030, Indian states will not only reduce dependence on thermal power but also drive economic growth through job creation and manufacturing opportunities. This approach allows India to build a robust, future-ready energy system that benefits both the environment and the economy.
Chapter 1 | State of play
Renewables rise in the daytime, thermal still dominates in dark
Despite the recent growth in wind and solar installations, thermal power still caters to about 80% of India’s power needs in non-solar hours
In this chapter:
Ramping up wind could now therefore be of more strategic importance than we realise as it can not only provide enhanced demand-supply balance but also help leverage the complementary nature of wind and solar helping the power sector planners to avoid locking-in resources into building more thermal capacity to meet the non-solar hour demand growth.
Chapter 2 | Wind is more necessary now than ever
Wind offers strategic advantages in India’s energy transition story
Leveraging wind’s complementarity with solar is crucial for India’s energy transition. Reaching the 2022 target of 60 GW would have increased wind power share in the grid during non-solar hours up to 14.5%.
In this chapter:
Beyond providing energy security and resource diversification, the wind sector contributes to India’s economic development by creating green jobs and positioning India an export hub of wind turbines.
In terms of employment creation, wind sector jobs are spread across four broad categories: business development, design and pre-construction, construction and commissioning and operations and maintenance. In addition to jobs associated with wind capacity deployment, India also has a substantial wind turbine and associated component manufacturing facilities to provide employment opportunities.
As per International Renewable Energy Agency’s (IRENA) estimates the Indian wind sector provided 40,000 jobs in 2022. Additionally, as per another study conducted by Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), the sector employed a workforce of 25,500 as of March 2021 and the employment opportunities are expected to rise six times by 2030.Further development of offshore wind is expected to generate additional employment across the value chain.
In terms of exporting wind turbines and associated components, India already has an annual domestic manufacturing capabilities of 17.25 GW. As per NITI Aayog’s study, India has over 17 domestic manufacturing companies and they export wind turbines and blades to Australia, Brazil, Europe and USA among other countries.
Chapter 3 | Evolving policies
Government’s policy interventions to boost wind capacity addition
Wind capacity addition in India slowed down in recent years, but both the central and state governments have introduced a series of interventions to bring the focus back on wind capacity addition.
In this chapter:
To further diversify the electricity mix, in 2015, India announced the National Offshore Wind Energy Policy. Offshore wind offers a significant opportunity for the country to tap into its vast coastal resources. With a long-term planning perspective, India is actively working to deploy offshore wind projects along the coastlines of Gujarat and Tamil Nadu.
In 2024, the Union Cabinet approved a viability gap funding (VGF) scheme for offshore wind energy projects with a total outlay of INR 74.53 billion. This includes an outlay of INR 68.53 billion for installation and commissioning of 1 GW of offshore wind energy projects (500 MW each off the coast of Gujarat and Tamil Nadu), and INR 6 billion for upgrading two ports to meet logistical requirements for offshore wind energy projects. This VGF scheme is a major step towards implementation of the National Offshore Wind Energy Policy, 2015.
Further, in February 2024, SECI announced a tender for allocation of sea-bed lease rights for 4 GW offshore wind power projects in Tamil Nadu. Later in September 2024, another tender to set up 500 MW offshore wind projects in Gujarat was announced.
Supporting Material
Methodology
This report primarily uses hourly generation data for 2023. The RE share estimates are based on Merit India data which reports wind and solar combined. For this analysis, wind and solar are disaggregated using the following approach. Hourly wind speeds were extracted from ERA5 data at the location and hub height of 4000 wind farms and converted to hourly capacity factors following this approach.
Global Horizontal Radiation was extracted from ERA5 data at the locations of solar installation and converted to capacity factor using this approach. These capacity factors were bias-corrected by state, using Ember’s state-level data, and the corrected capacity factors plus installed capacity used to split renewable generation reported by Merit India into wind and solar. As far we are aware, this is the first analysis based on Merit India data disaggregated between wind and solar.
For installed capacity, data is taken from CEA’s monthly installed capacity report.
In Chapter 1, a surge in solar capacity addition is calculated using installed capacity between 2014 and August 2024 whereas to arrive at a required growth rate for wind and solar NEP14 targets are considered. The share of wind and solar in the overall generation mix is taken from Ember’s Electricity Data Explorer for 2023 and to estimate the share of wind and solar in 2032, NEP14 projections are considered.
To estimate the contribution of wind, solar and thermal generation on hourly basis during solar and non-solar hours, the average of hourly generation data across all months is taken as per disaggregated Merit India data (see above).
Further in Chapter 2, to establish temporal complementarity of wind and solar resources, (a) for seasonal complementarity, average monthly capacity utilisation factors are calculated using CEA’s installed capacity data and total monthly generation and (b) for diurnal complementarity, average hourly generation data across all months is analysed.
To assess the contribution of wind if 2022 wind targets were met, 2023 generation data was modelled with average capacity utilisation factors of 30% and 19% for wind and solar capacities, respectively.
For spatial complementarity, monthly capacity utilisation factor is calculated based on state’s wind installed capacity and generation data across eight windy states in India and are compared for geographical complementarity.
To discuss leveraging the diurnal wind-solar complementarity in terms of tariff discovery, tariff data for vanilla wind, vanilla solar and wind-solar hybrid tenders were collected from various publicly available sources.
To highlight the added value of wind in terms of jobs and export opportunity, data is collected through literature review.
In Chapter 3, CEA’s state-specific resource adequacy report for 27 states were reviewed and projected wind capacity data for 2029-2030 was collected to estimate the projected contracted capacity. For detailed data and calculations, the accompanying excel file can be accessed here.
Acknowledgements
Project Advisor: Aditya Lolla
Communications: Ardhi Arsala Rahmani, Shiyao Zhang
Data: Nicolas Fulghum, Sam Hawkins,
Data viz: Jivan Zhen Thiru, Reynaldo Dizon
Neshwin Rodrigues contributed significantly to the review process and provided valuable suggestions for this report.
Header ImageWind farm in the rural area of India
Credit: pradeep subramanian / Alamy Stock Photo