Between May and December 2025, India curtailed 2.3 terawatt-hours of solar electricity it had already generated, enough to power Sri Lanka for a month. Grid operators ordered farms to switch off, not because demand was low, but because transmission lines could not absorb the output.
Meanwhile, coal plants kept running in adjacent states. That wasted sunlight could have displaced an estimated 2.1 million tonnes of CO2. It did not.
This is not a projection. It happened last year. And without a fundamental shift in priorities, it will get worse.
The “India adds record solar capacity” headlines are accurate and deserve acknowledgement. In 2025, India added nearly 38 GW of solar, a genuine milestone. But the same year, 50 GW of commissioned renewable capacity sat stranded because transmission infrastructure to evacuate their power simply did not exist. In Rajasthan alone, 8 GW remained stuck, with nearly half curtailed during peak solar hours. Grid operators were forced to curtail up to 23 GW between May and November to prevent system trips.
The compensation bill, Rs 575–690 crore, charged to consumers, bought no electricity in return.
Consider what India achieved on the generation side: solar tariffs below Rs 2.50 per unit in recent auctions, a competitive advantage built over a decade of policy continuity, manufacturing scale, and financial innovation. That achievement is real. But cheap generation is meaningless if the wire cannot carry it, the grid cannot balance it, and the distribution company cannot pay for it.
In FY2025, India commissioned 8,830 circuit kilometres of inter-state transmission lines against a target of 15,253, a 42 per cent shortfall and the lowest addition in a decade. More striking: 71 per cent of existing inter-state corridors are operating below 30 per cent utilisation.
The problem is not only about building more lines. It is about using existing infrastructure far more intelligently, something efficiency-first thinking has always insisted upon, and the grid is finally proving right.
Grid modernisation, in this context, is not a supporting act. It is the main act. Three things have to change.
Transmission must lead generation, not chase it. The Central Electricity Authority estimates Rs 2.44 lakh crore of investment needed for inter-state transmission to integrate 500 GW of non-fossil capacity by 2030. India has crossed 265 GW. Closing that gap in four years requires front-loaded spending, not incremental approvals after solar parks are already commissioned and sitting idle. Every new solar park built without a transmission pathway is a stranded asset in waiting.
The grid needs flexibility, not just capacity. India's duck curve has arrived. In October 2025, daytime demand fell sharply year-on-year while evening peaks held steady, a widening swing that coal plants, with their slow ramp rates, physically cannot match. Battery storage is the obvious bridge, but operational capacity remains under 1 GW, even as a pipeline of over 90 GWh sits under development.
In addition to storage, demand-side flexibility enabled by smart controls and time-of-use tariffs can shift load away from evening peaks at a much lower cost than new generation. This approach also helps better integrate renewables, thereby reducing the overall system costs. These tools exist. Deploying them at scale requires CERC and state regulators to move with urgency rather than caution.
Distribution reform cannot remain a perennial afterthought. State discoms carry accumulated losses of Rs 6.47 lakh crore and outstanding debt of Rs 7.26 lakh crore. A discom that cannot pay generators on time will not sign new solar-plus-storage PPAs, regardless of how competitive the tariff. Aggregate AT&C losses have improved, from 22.6 per cent to 15 per cent, and the ACS-ARR gap has narrowed close to zero. But the aggregate masks severe state-level variation.
Without financially solvent discoms, the entire value chain from panel to socket remains fragile.
This matters well beyond the energy ministry's mandate. India's industrial ambitions, semiconductor fabs, AI data centres being pitched to global hyperscalers, defence manufacturing corridors, PLI-linked factories, every single one depends on 24x7 reliable, competitively priced electricity. No multinational will anchor a $10 billion facility on a grid where 50 GW sits idle for want of a transmission line.
Grid reliability is not an energy problem. It is an industrial strategy problem. A geopolitical problem. A job's problem.
With the National Electricity Plan review cycle underway and CERC's flexibility market consultations open, this is precisely the moment to reweight priorities. The installation numbers are impressive, but they are not sufficient.
India proved solar can be cheap and bankable at scale. That was the first hard thing. The second, absorbing, moving, storing, and delivering that power without waste, without blackouts, and without passing the cost of dysfunction to consumers who can least afford it, is the work that actually determines whether the energy transition succeeds.
The grid is the product now. Everything else is an accessory.
(Authored by Sumedh Agarwal, Director, Smart and Resilient Power and Mobility, Alliance for an Energy Efficient Economy)
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of THE WEEK.