Two significant inefficiencies continue to plague the renewables sector, demanding continued discussions. One, the curtailment of renewables due to grid-related challenges; and two, the 44.8 GW of renewable projects that remain stranded with unsigned power purchase and sale agreements. These two issues have become thorns in the side of developers, who are either taking a financial hit despite generating renewable energy, or losing out on possible revenue. Recently, the renewables industry witnessed two major developments with respect to the above concerns. While one is worrisome, the other seems to be a positive development.
On May 13, 2026, at around 2:09 p.m., grid disturbances led to the complete outage of the Khavda renewable energy complex, resulting in a total generation loss of 8,963 MW. Within 16 seconds, three pooling stations with an installed capacity of 15.9 GW (14.8 GW of renewable energy and 1.1 GW of BESS), and around 17 EHV lines (eight at 765 kV and nine at 400 kV), tripped. In a presentation to the National Committee on Transmission, GRID-INDIA claimed that this outage is the largest generation loss event in the Indian grid to date.
Now, the positive development. The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has prepared a draft one-time relief package for around 44.8 GW of stranded renewable energy projects that have received letters of award but are still awaiting power purchase and sale agreements. Several demand-side (such as a one-time 100 per cent waiver of interstate transmission system charges, and provision of two hours of BESS support with standalone solar projects) and supply-side (such as provision of three resolution frameworks for developers to pick from) measures have been proposed. While such a proposal is timely, it remains to be seen if it will be finalised, whether such measures will be successful in easing developers’ concerns and how effective non-subsidy-based support measures will be in addressing this lingering issue.
Weeding out the inefficiencies facing the renewables sector quickly is critical to ensuring that it does not lose the investor confidence it has built over the years.
