India needs to explore incentives to improve renewables transmission capacity, power secretary says

India needs to explore the need for a production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme to improve its renewable energy transmission capacity, power secretary Pankaj Agarwal said at an event on Monday.

"We need to think about how we should localise supply chain for transmission equipment," Agarwal said, adding that 1,650 gigawatts (GW) of global renewable energy capacity is waiting to be connected to the grid.

India has rolled out multiple PLI schemes for manufacturing to reduce dependency on global supply chains and to spur domestic production.


There are constraints in India's transmission capacity, which include augmenting capacity for certain types of equipment, while global supply chains are under strain due to surging power demand, Agarwal said at an industry event in New Delhi.

Agarwal did not give details on the incentives.

The world's fastest growing major economy aims to increase its non-fossil power capacity to 500 GW by 2030 from about 154.5 GW at present.

India's coal-fired power output fell for a second straight month in September, on an annual basis, due to slower growth in electricity usage and as solar power generation picks up pace.