Solar power capacity addition in India, the world’s fourth largest renewable energy market, is expected to grow at a healthy 77 per cent Y-o-Y to 23 gigawatts (GW) in the current calendar year (CY), a report by Ember said.
India, which added more solar power capacity in the first five months of CY 2024 than the entire 2023, along with China, the US, Germany and Brazil is on track to account for 75 per cent of the world’s solar capacity addition in 2024.
Last year witnessed a lower number of installations amid uncertainty around government rules on solar manufacturing. Installations skyrocketed in March this year, before new policy changes came into place which mandated that solar modules used in government-backed projects have to be sourced from an Approved List of Models and Manufacturers (ALMM), the report said.
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“However, growth since then has remained steady, and by July the country had installed 18 GW of solar capacity, equalling its all-time record for annual solar panel installations from 2022. At the current pace of additions, India is on track to install 23 GW by the end of 2024, up 77 per cent compared to 2023,” it added.
Overall, Ember estimates that at the current rate of additions, the world will install 593 GW of solar panels this year. That’s 29 per cent more than was installed last year, maintaining strong growth even after an estimated 87 per cent surge in 2023. In 2024, an estimated 292 GW of solar capacity was installed by the end of July.
The 593 GW estimated from the pace of additions so far this year is in line with forecasts made by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) but is almost 200 GW higher than the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) main case outlook released in January 2024, the report pointed out.
According to estimates from Ember, BNEF, and SolarPower Europe, the world installed around 450 GW of solar panels in 2023 - an amount that seemed inconceivable even one year before.
“As an example, in January 2022, BNEF predicted that global solar additions in 2023 would reach just 236 GW. As a result of the higher installations in 2023, forecasts for 2024 have been revised upwards. For example, SolarPower Europe adjusted its forecast for 2024 from 401 GW (June 2023) to 544 GW (June 2024),” it added.
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