There’s no doubt about it — China leads the world in solar power growth and Spain leads the world in solar power as a share of electricity — but India deserves some praise, too. Asian giant #2 had its biggest year for solar power growth — and it wasn’t even close.
Quick India Solar Power Growth
In 2022, India installed 13 GWac (18 GWdc) of new solar power capacity, 27% more than it installed in 2021, which was its previous best year ever.
Chart courtesy of National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
Unlike China, where distributed solar PV has taken off, India’s solar power market was dominated by utility-scale solar power additions. “Large-scale projects increased 33% from 2021 and made up 87% of new 2022 PV capacity,” the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) writes. In fact, it wasn’t even a case of utility-scale solar PV growing faster than rooftop solar — rooftop solar power additions declined year over year. “Rooftop projects decreased 4% from 2021 and made up 13% of new 2022 PV capacity.”
But here’s the stat where India crushes China, and probably everyone else: solar PV capacity growth accounted for 82% of the country’s total power capacity growth. It absolutely dominated the new power plant market. In China, which did well itself on this front, 44% of new power capacity came from solar. That’s dominance — forget 2050.
And don’t expect the Indian solar power market to slow down. At the end of 2022, 58 GWac of large solar power projects were still in the pipeline and yet another 51 GWac were pending auction. There’s plenty more solar PV project growth for years of growth like 2022 saw. In fact, just combining those numbers, you could have more than 8 years of growth at the 13 GWac level, or you could have more than 5 years of solar power growth above 20 GWac a year. And that’s not even counting rooftop solar power.
India Solar PV Exports
While India’s internal solar power growth was truly impressive in 2022, its solar PV power export growth was at least as impressive.
Chart courtesy of National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
That’s an enormous jump in solar power exports, and as you can see, it’s the result of one certain market — the USA. I wonder why that is? Oh, and as you can see, that’s the change from the first half of the year compared to the second half of the year!
“Indian module exports jumped more than tenfold between the first and second halves of 2022, with all the increase going to the United States,” NREL writes. Also noteworthy for those Indian module manufacturers, “The US module market yields higher profit margins than the Indian market.” (Who doesn’t like that … aside from US solar panel buyers?)
A little more on the specifics of why Indian solar modules flooded the US market, NREL writes, “Mid-year U.S. policies (UFLPA, AD/CVD investigation) contributed to demand for Indian modules.”
To sweeten the pie and go even further, some Indian solar module manufacturers are reportedly looking at building solar module factories in the United States to take advantage of US Inflation Reduction Act subsidies Joe Biden brought to town.
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