Round-the-clock clean power is waiting to play the game changer

Clean and reliable renewable energy at gigawatt scale is closer than ever before but needs policy support to make a difference

- Amol Phadke & Nikit Abhyankar are, respectively, faculty director and co-faculty director, India Energy and Climate Center at the University of California at Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy.

India stands at a pivotal moment, poised to translate its renewable energy achievements into broader economic gains. Our recent study, backed by market developments, demonstrates that solar-plus-storage systems in India now deliver reliable, round-the-clock electricity at costs competitive with new coal plants. These systems offer fixed prices for 25 years, rapid deployment and near-zero emissions, effectively meeting urgent industrial demands and advancing national clean-energy commitments.

This affordability arises from global technological advancements, with solar-panel and battery storage costs dropping over 90% in the past decade and battery lifespans tripling. Equally critical have been India's strategic policy interventions, particularly large-scale transparent auctions that have significantly reduced costs. Indian developers now achieve some of the lowest solar and storage costs worldwide, with solar project capital expenditures less than a third of those in the US. Recent solar-plus-storage bids in India have sharply declined to 3.1-3.5 per kWh—a 50% decrease in 18 months.

Our analysis, based on implied costs from recent solar-plus-storage bids and validated against global bottom-up estimates, shows that 24/7 clean power with over 95% availability can be delivered for under ₹6/kWh. This is comparable to—and in many cases lower than—the cost of power from new coal plants. A common criticism of India's firm and dispatchable renewable tenders is that they do not match coal in reliability and result in excessive surplus generation. However, our analysis shows that appropriately sized solar-plus-storage systems can achieve over 95% availability even without significant oversupply, directly challenging that assumption.