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India likely to add 23 GW of solar capacity in 2024

Posted on by darion

Solar capacity additions in India, the world’s fourth-largest renewable energy market, are expected to grow by a healthy 77 percent year-on-year to 23 gigawatts (GW) in the current calendar year (CY), according to an Ember report.

India, which added more solar capacity in the first five months of calendar year 2024 than in all of 2023, is on track, along with China, the US, Germany and Brazil, to account for 75% of global solar capacity additions in 2024.

Last year, installations were down amid uncertainty over government regulations on solar panel manufacturing. Installations surged in March this year, before new policy changes came into effect that mandated that solar modules used in government-backed projects must come from an approved list of models and manufacturers (ALMM), the report said.

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“However, growth since then has remained steady, with the country having installed 18 GW of solar capacity by July, equalling its all-time record for annual solar panel installations set in 2022. At the current rate of growth, India is on track to install 23 GW by the end of 2024, a 77 per cent increase over 2023,” it added.

Overall, Ember estimates that at the current rate of expansion, the world will install 593 GW of solar panels this year. That’s 29 percent more than was installed last year, maintaining strong growth even after an estimated 87 percent increase in 2023. In 2024, an estimated 292 GW of solar capacity will be installed by the end of July.

The 593 GW estimate, based on the pace of additions this year, is in line with Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) forecasts but is almost 200 GW higher than the International Energy Agency (IEA) headline forecast published in January 2024, the report said.

According to estimates from Ember, BNEF and SolarPower Europe, around 450 GW of solar panels will be installed worldwide in 2023 – a figure that seemed unthinkable just a year ago.

“For example, in January 2022, BNEF predicted that global solar additions in 2023 would reach just 236 GW. As a result of higher installations in 2023, the 2024 forecast was revised upwards. For example, SolarPower Europe revised its 2024 forecast from 401 GW (June 2023) to 544 GW (June 2024),” it added.

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