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This week has been a record breaking way in more ways than one for India. If the weekend brought news that 19 of the world’s hottest places were in India, it also brought news of a power demand peak that usually follows much later in the summer.
A record peak power demand of 256.1 GW was met on April 25 amid the heatwave. In what should be a matter of pride for grid managers in India, the grid held up well, supported in large part by contributions from a clean energy a resource that barely existed a decade ago. Solar energy contributed 57 GW, about 22% of generation at the time. Around midday, solar output hit 81 GW, nearly one-third of total electricity, showing its growing role in the power mix. With summer peaks projected to cross 271 GW this year, solar’s role will be key to ensuring relief from the summer heat. And in a future of rising demand for cooling, solar. along with energy storage may yet have an even bigger role to play by 2035. The numbers come at a particularly interesting time for the world at large as well.
 Solar Overtakes Coal, Finally
While Coal remains King for now In India, for the first time in over a century, the sun has outshone coal globally. In 2025, renewables climbed to nearly 34% of global electricity generation, edging past coal’s share for the first time since the industrial revolution. Solar led the charge: according to the IEA’s Global Energy Review 2026, it met more than a quarter of the entire world’s additional energy demand last year — a single source, supplying the majority of new growth for an energy-hungry planet.
The numbers would have seemed fantastical a decade ago. In 2015, solar was a rounding error in global energy statistics — a niche technology dependent on subsidies and optimism. Today, it is the world’s fastest-growing energy source, cheaper than coal in nearly every market, and accelerating.
The India Story
Having tracked the Solar Story in India since 2016, we at Saur Energy know that nowhere is the whiplash more striking than in India.
In 2015, India had barely 4 GW of installed solar capacity. Today, it has crossed 150 GW, driven by record additions of nearly 44–45 GW in FY2025–26 alone — one of the fastest expansions anywhere in the world. Renewables now account for over 41% of India’s total installed power capacity, with solar as the single largest contributor at 28% of the overall power mix.  With India looking to add almost 125 MW per day of solar through to 2030, the role of this ‘young’ source cannot be overstated in our future needs. Especially at a time when another key green resource, Hydro, faces all sorts of climate related challenge to keep growing and maintain its share of India’s power mix 
And ensuring the continued role of solar, way beyond anyone’s imagination even five years ago perhaps,  is the new reality of energy storage costs. Solar’s infamous “duck curve,” where solar generation collapses in the evening just as household demand spikes, is already visible in every state’s load data, but efforts are already on to flatten this curve and ensure solar has a role to play well beyond sunshine hours.  Importantly, as we saw in Winter this year, variations in peak power demand are much less as compared to hostorical numbers, ensuring that an ever-available resource like solar is not ‘wasted’ during periods of lower demand. With peak winter demand of 245 GW as seen in january this year, it is clear that planning for higher solar is a lot more easier than earlier. Curtailment risks will also drop as transmission indra improves. 
Modelling by Ember suggests that battery storage can shift daytime solar generation to cover evening and nighttime needs, allowing solar-plus-storage systems to meet nearly all demand on most days from January to April. In India,  tenders for renewable power with energy storage or peak power supply now dominate government auctions, and the Union Budget increased viability gap funding for battery storage systems tenfold.
The trajectory is clear. Solar PV generation in India is expected to rise at an average annual rate of 24% through 2030, and when storage economics follow the same cost curve that solar itself did over the last decade — and there is every reason to believe they will — solar will begin to fill hours it was never expected to reach. 
We are India’s leading B2B media house, reporting full-time on solar energy, wind, battery storage, solar inverters, and electric vehicle (EV)
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