India is the seventh-largest country in the world located in South Asia with a total area of 3.3 million km2. India has a population of 1.3 billion, and major languages spoken are English, Hindi and 22 other officially recognized languages. The country is densely populated, and the capital is New Delhi.
India is considered a developing mixed economy and is the world's seventh largest economy by nominal GDP. The largest contributors to the economy are the services sector, which contributes about 54% on account of IT and business process outsourcing exports, followed by the industrial sector at 29% and the agriculture sector at 17%, which employs nearly half the population.
India is currently reliant on fossil fuels, with nearly 63% of the electricity generated by thermal power plants, hydroelectric, nuclear and a significant 22% from renewable sources such as solar, wind and biomass. India is one of the countries with the largest production of energy from renewable sources. Despite rapid strides in power capacity addition, only 93% of the population is connected to electricity, implying that 90 million households have inadequate access to electricity. India's energy demand is driven primarily by the industrial and transport sector.
Energy access is an overarching priority for the country and the national energy policy reflects that priority, and the development of renewables to achieve that. The government has set am ambitious target of reaching 175 GW of installed capacity from renewable sources by 2022, which includes 100 GW of solar and 60 GW of wind power capacity.
Fiscal incentives include feed-in tariffs and generation-based incentives, preferential tax treatment through accelerated depreciation, tax holidays and duty exemption, incentives to promote R&D, demand stimulation (renewable purchase obligations, renewable energy certificate and finally, manufacturing-linked incentives in the form of domestic content requirements, technology transfer and investment promotion schemes.
Solar power in India is a fast developing industry. The country's solar installed capacity reached 20 GW in February 2018. India expanded its solar-generation capacity 8 times from 2,650 MW on 26 May 2014 to over 20 GW as on 31 January 2018. The 20 GW capacity was initially targeted for 2022 but the government achieved the target four years ahead of schedule. The country added 3 GW of solar capacity in 2015-2016, 5 GW in 2016-2017 and over 10 GW in 2017-2018, with the average current price of solar electricity dropping to 18% below the average price of its coal-fired counterpart.
In January 2015 the Indian government expanded its solar plans, targeting US$100 billion in investment and 100 GW of solar capacity (including 40 GW from rooftop solar) by 2022.India's initiative of 100 GW of solar energy by 2022 is an ambitious target, since the world's installed solar-power capacity in 2017 is expected to be 303 GW. The improvements in solar thermal storage power technology in recent years has made this task achievable as the cheaper solar power need not depend on costly and polluting coal/gas/nuclear based power generation for ensuring stable grid operation.
In addition to its large-scale grid-connected solar PV initiative, India is developing off-grid solar power for local energy needs. Solar products have increasingly helped to meet rural needs; by the end of 2015 just under one million solar lanterns were sold in the country, reducing the need for kerosene. That year, 118,700 solar home lighting systems were installed and 46,655 solar street lighting installations were provided under a national program; just over 1.4 million solar cookers were distributed in India.
A report published by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) found that India installed 10 GW of solar in 2017, almost double its record in 2016. Crucially, India’s “Scheme for Development of Solar Parks” has proven successful at attracting foreign capital toward construction of the world’s largest ultra-mega solar parks.
With about 300 clear and sunny days in a year, the calculated solar energy incidence on India's land area is about 5000 trillion kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year (or 5 EWh/yr). The solar energy available in a single year exceeds the possible energy output of all of the fossil fuel energy reserves in India. The daily average solar-power-plant generation capacity in India is 0.20 kWh per m2 of used land area, equivalent to 1400–1800 peak (rated) capacity operating hours in a year with available, commercially-proven technology.