In India’s renewable energy record, solar isn’t the star

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Editor's note: Last Sunday, India hit a milestone in its renewable energy journey. Electricity generated by grid-connected renewable power sources hit a one-year high (and, most likely, an all-time high) of 875 million units in a 24-hour period on 22 May, according to the India Renewables Dashboard of the Central Electricity Authority and the non-profit CEEW Centre for Energy Finance. (One unit is one kilowatt-hour, roughly the power consumed by an air conditioner every 40 minutes.) The National Load Despatch Centre, an agency that matches real-time power supply with demand, reported that non-fossil sources (solar, wind, nuclear, hydro, biomass, etc.) contributed nearly 34% of the electricity supplied to consumers that day. This is all good news. The plan, after all, is that in the year 2030, India will be sourcing at least 50% of its energy from non-fossil sources, and at least for a day we seem to have come quite close to the target. I am surprised that Prime Minister Modi did not address the nation on this. But it was probably a smart call. There are good reasons why the …