10 years of NDA: Renewable energy industry’s performance has been pretty good, says Enerfra Projects (India) MD UB Reddy

The renewable energy industry’s performance in the last ten years has been pretty good, though one might say that it could still have been better. True, solar installations have risen faster than wind, but that is also because solar projects are easier to build and require fewer approvals. Let us not forget that while wind can be put up only at certain sites, solar can come up anywhere. Last year (2023-24) was a good one for both solar and wind with solar installations of 15 GW and wind 3.2 GW. So, overall, things have been satisfactory. 

The government has been proactive. For instance, wind installations were suffering because often they required clearance from the Ministry of Defence. This was one of the reasons for the installations not being as good as they could have been. But when the industry took the matter to Secretary, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, he quickly organised meetings with Defence and the matter has been sorted out. To give another example, wind installations were low because after the well-intentioned ‘reverse bidding’ some investors started bidding ultra-low tariffs, but at the industry’s request the government has changed the method of bidding to ‘closed bidding’. Because of these, one should see better capacity additions in the coming years. 

The next government would do well to focus on streamlining policies for ‘scheduling and forecasting’, which is very important to handle intermittent supply from renewable energy plants. Also, in this exercise, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) should be involved, for the sake of accuracy of forecasting. 

As for solar, the government’s Make In India policy has engendered many manufacturing units, which is very welcome. However, alongside the government should evolve a system for monitoring the quality of solar modules produced. 

Also, I’d urge the government to take a re-look at the present policy of building large solar installations in single locations, because that might create grid-related issues. 

As said earlier, it is difficult to ‘rate’ the government on this, because multiple factors come into play. Suffice to say that globally, except perhaps in China, the renewable energy industry’s performance has been good but not great. India is no exception to this trend.