India Added 24.56 GW of Renewable Capacity in Six Months and Stood at 299.25 GW on 30 September 2026, With Solar at 171 GW

India’s installed renewable energy capacity stood at 299.25 GW on 30 September 2026, according to Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) data that Energetica India reported on 14 October. A gigawatt (GW) is 1,000 megawatts. Of the total, 24.56 GW was installed in the six months from April, the first half of the 2026-27 financial year.

The ministry counts large hydropower as renewable and leaves nuclear out. That makes this count narrower than the 300 GW milestone it announced in August, which covers all non-fossil sources. Both are set out below with their dates. As of 29 October 2026, the latest MNRE table found for this piece is the one for 30 September.

What the 299.25 GW is made of

Energetica’s report, which draws on the MNRE table, gives three large parts: 171.05 GW of solar, 59.20 GW of wind and 52.06 GW of large hydro. Solar is about 57 per cent of the total, up from 162.15 GW on 30 June 2026, the figure the minister gave the Lok Sabha on 22 July. The rest, about 16.9 GW by simple subtraction, is bio-power and small hydro. A PIB release of 8 April 2026 counted them at 11.75 GW and 5.17 GW in March.

Solar splits into 125.65 GW of ground-mounted plants, 33.41 GW of grid-connected rooftop systems, 5.36 GW for the solar half of wind-solar hybrid plants and 6.63 GW of off-grid systems. The solar capacity article follows those categories year by year and covers the manufacturing side.

Six months, 24.56 GW

The April to September additions were 20.79 GW of solar, 3.11 GW of wind and 650 MW of large hydro. September alone added 3,692 MW, of which 3,011 MW was solar and 681 MW was wind. For scale, the whole of 2025-26 added 44.61 GW of solar and 6.05 GW of wind. The ministry’s April release calls the wind figure the highest in any single year and the 55.29 GW of non-fossil capacity added that year the largest in any year.

The same release makes a cross-check possible, because it lists the March 2026 position: 150.26 GW of solar, 56.09 GW of wind, 51.41 GW of large hydro and 274.68 GW of renewables in all. Add the six-month figures and the result is 171.05 GW, 59.20 GW, 52.06 GW and about 299.24 GW. Those match the September table, so the additions and the total agree with each other.

Since March 2014, when PIB puts renewable capacity at 76.38 GW, the count has risen about 3.9 times, by this piece’s arithmetic. Solar went from 2.82 GW to 171.05 GW, and wind from 21.04 GW to 59.20 GW.

Why there are two 300 GW figures

On 24 July 2026 the Minister of New and Renewable Energy, Pralhad Joshi, said non-fossil capacity had risen to 297.36 GW and would cross 300 GW “in the coming days”, according to The Tribune. He told a CII energy conference on 6 August that the line had been crossed, and PIB published the details on 9 August.

The ministry’s release counts 300.50 GW on 31 July 2026: 164.59 GW of solar, 58.14 GW of wind, 57.24 GW of large and small hydro, 11.75 GW of bio-power and 8.78 GW of nuclear. It puts that at over 54 per cent of India’s installed electricity capacity of around 552 GW, and over 60 per cent of the 500 GW target for 2030.

The renewable-only count leaves out nuclear’s 8.78 GW, so it stood at 299.25 GW on 30 September while the non-fossil count had passed 300 GW two months earlier. Adding nuclear to the September figure gives 308.03 GW of non-fossil capacity, by this piece’s arithmetic. The non-fossil milestone article covers how the ministry defines that category and how the share has moved since 2014.

Where the plants are

Energetica’s state table for 30 September ranks Gujarat first for total renewable capacity at 55,511 MW, followed by Rajasthan at 51,596 MW, Maharashtra at 33,316 MW, Tamil Nadu at 30,070 MW and Karnataka at about 28,213 MW.

The leaders differ by technology. In solar the order is Rajasthan at 45,121 MW, Gujarat at 36,235 MW, Maharashtra at 20,400 MW, Tamil Nadu at 14,354 MW and Karnataka at 12,348 MW. In wind it is Gujarat at 17,044 MW, Tamil Nadu at 12,335 MW, Karnataka at 8,974 MW, Maharashtra at 6,485 MW and Rajasthan at 5,815 MW.

New capacity is concentrated in the same states. JMK Research counts Gujarat at about 12.9 GW and Rajasthan at about 9 GW of the solar and wind added from January to September 2026. Maharashtra added about 3 GW. With Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, the top five states took about 76 per cent of the additions.

The calendar-year view from JMK Research

The MNRE table above runs on the financial year, April to March. JMK Research counts January to September 2026 instead, and its totals should not be added to the ministry’s. It puts solar additions at about 35.2 GW, up 19.5 per cent on the same months of 2025. That is made of about 24.4 GW of utility-scale plants, about 9.8 GW of rooftop and about 1.04 GW of off-grid and distributed systems.

JMK’s quarterly figures show utility-scale solar at 12.12 GW in the first quarter, 6.87 GW in the second and 5.4 GW in the third. Rooftop solar took about 34 per cent of its nine-month total in the third quarter. Cumulative rooftop capacity reached about 33.4 GW, which matches the MNRE figure.

Wind added about 4.69 GW in the nine months, down about 5.5 per cent on a year earlier. JMK expects another 10 to 12 GW of solar and wind in the last quarter of 2026. At the CII conference Joshi said more than 50 lakh households were covered by the PM Surya Ghar rooftop scheme. The PM Surya Ghar article has the installation counts and the subsidy rules.

What comes next

Wind has the clearest gap between target and progress. Industrial Info Resources reported on 30 September that MNRE expects 7.5 to 8 GW of wind capacity in 2026-27, and the six-month figure of 3.11 GW is roughly 39 to 41 per cent of that range. Cumulative wind capacity was 58.52 GW on 31 August.

Capacity and electricity supplied are separate measures. PIB’s April release says non-fossil sources provided 29.2 per cent of India’s generation in 2025-26, or 538.97 billion units, while they held over 54 per cent of installed capacity.

Against the 500 GW target for 2030, the 308.03 GW non-fossil count leaves about 192 GW to install, by this piece’s arithmetic.