According to the report of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, there is no shortage of electricity in the country, but the challenge is to generate it at the right time. Electricity is cheap due to solar power during the day, but becomes expensive and scarce in the evening as demand increases, increasing pressure on the grid.
New Delhi [भारत]July 7 (ANI): India’s power system is no longer struggling to generate enough electricity, according to a new paper by the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM). Rather it is struggling to generate electricity at the right time.
The paper says the main problem for the Indian grid has now shifted from capacity to flexibility, and three market signals show how severe this imbalance between solar and non-solar hours has become.
Three big signs of lack of flexibility
huge fluctuations in prices
The first signs are visible in prices. According to EAC-PM, the price difference between solar hours and non-solar hours during the day has increased so much that it has reached almost nine times the peak-to-trough ratio. The report says that if there was no price ceiling in the market, this difference would have been even greater. In practice, electricity is plentiful and cheap in the middle of the day when solar energy production is at its peak, and in the evening when the sun goes down but demand remains high, it becomes scarce and expensive.
lack of credibility
The second sign is visible in reliability. The Council found that “grid failures to meet demand are much greater in non-solar hours than in solar hours”. During the day, when solar energy is being generated, the system operates to a large extent. But the stress increases after sunset, when solar energy decreases rapidly and the grid does not have enough flexible resources to make up for the shortfall fast enough.
waste of clean energy
The third sign is visible in the waste of clean energy. The report said that a large amount of solar energy is being wasted (curtailed) because it cannot be used immediately after generation. The scale of this loss is significant. The paper estimates that the average daily solar energy loss in May 2026 was equivalent to enough electricity to power more than a quarter of Delhi for a day.
These three trends together point to a grid that is rich in solar power for a few hours and then suffers from a shortage the rest of the time. The council argues that this is not a production problem, but a timing problem, and will increase as India adds more solar power.
What is the solution to this problem?
Tackling this will require changes to the way electricity is planned and distributed throughout the day, with a greater emphasis on storing afternoon excess power and shifting demand to solar hours, the report said. The paper warns that without it, the price volatility, evening outages and energy waste seen today will become even more acute as the solar fleet expands. (ANI)
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