India Reached 171 GW of Installed Solar in September 2026, but Its Factories Have About 2 GW of Wafer Capacity

On 30 September 2026, India had 171.05 GW of installed solar capacity, according to the table the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) updated on 8 October. A gigawatt (GW) is a thousand megawatts. The ministry’s count for March 2014 was 2.82 GW. The page’s heading still says 31 August, but its columns are dated 30 September 2026.

Making the panels is a separate count. The government’s tally of ingot and wafer capacity, the step before a solar cell is made, stood at about 2 GW in a Lok Sabha reply of 22 July 2026. What follows gives each figure with its source and date, and says where sources disagree.

What the ministry counts

MNRE splits the 171.05 GW into four parts: 125.65 GW of ground-mounted plants, 33.41 GW of grid-connected rooftop, 5.36 GW for the solar half of wind-solar hybrid plants, and 6.63 GW of off-grid systems. September added 3.01 GW, and April to September added 20.79 GW.

The same table puts India’s total non-fossil capacity at 308.03 GW, which includes large hydro, wind, biomass, small hydro and 8.78 GW of nuclear. Solar is more than half of it. In a written reply on 22 July 2026, the minister Pralhad Joshi told the Lok Sabha that the International Renewable Energy Agency ranks India third in the world for installed solar, and gave the figure for 30 June 2026 as 162.15 GW.

Year by year, from 2.82 GW

MNRE’s year-wise table lists what was added in each financial year, April to March. It starts with 1.17 GW in 2014-15 and reaches 9.56 GW in 2017-18. The next three years were lower: 6.75 GW, 6.51 GW and 5.63 GW. Then came 12.76 GW in 2021-22, 12.78 GW in 2022-23, 15.03 GW in 2023-24 and 23.83 GW in 2024-25.

Adding those up gives about 29.1 GW at the end of March 2019, 81.8 GW in March 2024 and 105.6 GW in March 2025. The table on MNRE’s page has no column for 2025-26, so the figure for that year comes from the ministry’s press release of 8 April 2026. It says 44.61 GW was added, against a target of 34 GW, for a total of 150.26 GW at 31 March 2026. The ministry calls it the highest ever, almost double the year before.

Of that 44.61 GW, 16.31 GW was distributed solar, meaning rooftop systems and the PM KUSUM scheme for solar farm pumps. The ministry says commercial and industrial users, including captive plants built to supply a single company, took about 15 GW. Rooftop installations under the PM Surya Ghar scheme had reached 47.26 lakh households by 18 July 2026, per the Lok Sabha reply.

One comparison does not line up with MNRE’s. Ember, the energy think tank, counts calendar 2025 and puts India’s additions at 38 GW in alternating-current terms, 54 percent more than in 2024. It says that was the first year India installed more solar than the United States. The window and the measuring basis differ from MNRE’s financial year, so the two figures should not be set against each other.

Kamuthi, Pavagada and Bhadla

Three parks show the scale. Adani Green’s plant at Kamuthi in Tamil Nadu is 648 MW. Mercom reported on 22 September 2016 that all of it was connected to the grid, built in eight months at a cost Adani put at $679 million (about Rs 4,560 crore). Only 360 MW had been commissioned by March of that year, and the rest waited on evacuation, the work of getting the power out to the transmission network. The same report said Adani was operating at Rs 7.1 a unit while a case before the state regulator was pending.

Pavagada in Karnataka is 2,050 MW. Mercom’s report of 27 December 2019 gives the split among builders: NTPC 600 MW, the Karnataka renewable energy agency 1,250 MW and the Solar Energy Corporation of India 200 MW. A WRI India paper of April 2025 says the park sits on 13,000 acres leased from 2,300 farmers in five villages, where most people had depended on land for a living.

Bhadla in Rajasthan is 2,245 MW. Mercom reported on 19 March 2020 that it had become fully operational once Hero Future Energies commissioned a 300 MW project. Mercom had headlined its Pavagada report with the same claim less than three months earlier, so the label has been used for both parks.

The ministry also runs a solar park scheme. Under it, 56 parks with 39,461 MW have been sanctioned in 14 states, and 18,919 MW of projects had been commissioned in them, the Lok Sabha reply says.

What a unit of solar power sells for

Kamuthi’s Rs 7.1 a unit in 2016 compares with a lowest bid of Rs 2 a unit in a 1,070 MW Rajasthan auction by the Solar Energy Corporation of India. Mercom reported that on 23 November 2020, citing its own sources, and said it beat the previous record of Rs 2.36 by 15.3 percent.

In December 2024 Waaree won a 170 MW plant at Neemuch in Madhya Pradesh at Rs 2.15 a unit. Ten companies took part, and the bidding opened at Rs 2.30, SolarQuarter reported. The same article says tariffs discovered after the ALMM rules took effect in April 2024 had ranged from Rs 2.48 to Rs 2.70.

Panels made here, wafers made elsewhere

A solar panel starts as polysilicon, which is melted and drawn into an ingot, sliced into wafers, turned into cells, and assembled into modules. India’s factories are strongest at the last step. The government protects them with a register called the Approved List of Models and Manufacturers, ALMM. Government-backed projects must buy modules from its List-I. Since 1 June 2026, those modules are meant to use cells from List-II. A notice of 18 July 2026 extended an exemption to 31 December 2026 for net-metering and open-access projects, and MNRE titled it “no blanket extension”.

Four figures for module capacity are in circulation, each from a different list or survey:

• MNRE says module capacity was about 172 GW on 31 March 2026, against 2.3 GW in 2014.
• Energetica India reported on 18 September 2026 that List-I held 228,524 MW after a September addition of 12,256 MW.
• Mercom’s survey, as reported by PV Tech, put all Indian module capacity at 261.7 GW in June 2026. An IEEFA and JMK Research report cited in the same article put it at about 233 GW.
• The Lok Sabha reply counts only the makers in the incentive scheme for high-efficiency modules: about 42 GW of modules, 11.5 GW of cells and about 2 GW of ingot and wafer capacity at the end of June 2026.

Cells are far behind. Energetica India reported that List-II reached 36,864 MW in September 2026, in its tenth revision since the first list on 31 July 2025. The IEEFA and JMK report puts factory use at 35 to 40 percent. PV Tech says Mercom found imports of cells and modules up 18 percent in the first half of 2026 against the first half of 2025, with cells 81 percent of the total. Module imports alone fell from about $4.35 billion in 2023-24 to about $994 million in 2025-26, per the Lok Sabha reply.

Wafers are furthest behind. In March 2026 MNRE extended the list to ingots and wafers, to take effect on 1 June 2028. The first wafer list will be issued only when at least three independent factories with a combined 15 GW a year are running. Vinay Rustagi of Premier Energies told pv magazine: “Currently 100% of our demand for solar wafers is met from imports.”

The same shape shows up in pharmaceuticals and defence, where finished goods are made at home and a key input is bought abroad.

Solar generation reached 9.4 percent of the mix in 2025

Ember’s Global Electricity Review 2026 puts India’s 2025 solar generation at 196 TWh, 9.4 percent of its electricity and up 37 percent in a year. Solar passed hydropower as India’s largest clean source. Wind and solar together made 14 percent, against 17 percent for the world, and clean generation overall was 27 percent. Coal’s share fell from 75 to 71 percent.

The ministry’s figures show the gap between capacity and output. It said non-fossil sources passed 50 percent of installed capacity in June 2025, five years ahead of the 2030 pledge under the Paris Agreement. Non-fossil generation in 2025-26 was 29.2 percent of the total, 538.97 billion units.

The power does not always get used. Ember reported that between late May and December 2025 the grid operator curtailed 2.3 TWh of solar, about 18 percent of an average month’s solar output, largely because demand came in lower than forecast. Affected generators were paid an estimated Rs 575 crore to Rs 690 crore. Ruchita Shah, an Ember analyst, said the episode showed that clean energy cannot scale efficiently without flexibility.

The 500 GW sum

At the COP26 climate summit the Prime Minister announced a goal of 500 GW of non-fossil capacity by 2030, and MNRE says it is working towards it. Against the 308.03 GW counted on 30 September 2026, that leaves about 192 GW, by this piece’s arithmetic.

The International Energy Agency’s Renewables 2025 report, published in October 2025, said India was on track to meet its 2030 target and become the second-largest growth market for renewables, with capacity set to rise 2.5 times in five years.