The total installed capacity of solar power generation has crossed 25 giga watts (GV), according to Mercom India Research.
The country recently marked 25 GW of installed solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity, with the seven months seeing over 5 GW of solar PV capacity getting installed.
This includes both large-scale and rooftop solar.
In January 2018, Mercom had reported that India had achieved 20 GW in cumulative solar installations, meeting the original target set for 2022. Today, that target has ben increased to 100 GW by 2022.
In the first half of 2018, India installed 4,943 MW of solar and this includes the installation numbers of January 2018, as per Mercom’s India Solar Project Tracker.
While the utility-scale solar PV projects in India accounts for over 22.5 GW of installed capacity, the rooftop solar projects account for over 2.4 GW as of date.
Karnataka is the top solar state of India followed by Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and Rajasthan.
“India achieving 25 percent of its installation target is significant. However, achieving the remaining 75 GW of the target by 2022 looks daunting and will require a huge push to make this happen,” Raj Prabhu, CEO of Mercom Capital Group, said in a statement.
Mercom India Research forecasts solar installations of approximately 8.3 GW in CY 2018. Out of this, over 5 GW of solar projects have been installed in the first half of the year. Installation rates are forecasted to decline in the second half due to lack of a strong project pipeline.
Recently, implementing agencies such as the Solar Energy Corporation of India), Uttar Pradesh New and Energy Development Agency have cancelled gigawatt-scale auctions. Announcement of safeguard duty could slow down tender and auction activity in the short-term.
Solar installations in 2019 are also expected to be flat as longer commissioning timeline will push approximately 1.3 GW of large-scale projects from 2019 to 2020.
Due to uncertainty around the safeguard duty, auction activity in the first half of 2018 was weak which means the large-scale project pipeline for 2019 again will be weak.