India solar power capacity crosses 150 gigawatts, then climbs to 168 gigawatts in 5 months

India solar power capacity crosses 150 gigawatts

India solar power capacity passed 150 gigawatts of installed capacity on 31 March 2026, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy states. Installed capacity is the most electricity all of a country solar panels could produce at once if the sun reached every one of them at the same moment, not what they actually generate hour to hour. A gigawatt equals 1 billion watts, a unit large enough to describe a national power system. The precise figure was 150.26 gigawatts, reported by pv magazine and independently confirmed at 150.261 gigawatts by The Pamphlet, both citing the ministry own count. Solar alone now makes up 55% of India own total 275 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity, a total that also includes wind, hydropower and other sources.

A record year built the milestone

The milestone came after a record year for capacity additions. India added 44.61 gigawatts of new solar capacity in the fiscal year that produced it, April 2025 through March 2026, The Pamphlet reports, the largest annual addition on record. March 2026 alone accounted for 6.656 gigawatts, also a single month record. Ground mounted solar farms, panels built across open land rather than on rooftops, added 34.8 gigawatts over the fiscal year, up 106% from the year before, pv magazine reports. Rooftop solar, panels installed on homes and businesses and connected to the shared electricity network, added 8.7 gigawatts, up 69%. Rajasthan led the country large scale additions with 12,140 megawatts, 35% of the year total, ahead of Gujarat at 8,952 megawatts and Maharashtra at 6,177 megawatts.

The count keeps climbing

The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy own live dashboard shows the total kept climbing after March, reaching 168.04 gigawatts by 31 August 2026. Its breakdown splits the total into 123.99 gigawatts of ground mounted plants, 32.59 gigawatts of grid connected rooftop solar, 6.63 gigawatts of off grid solar, systems that generate power without connecting to the shared electricity network at all, and 4.83 gigawatts of solar hybrid projects, sites that pair solar panels with another power source at the same location. Those 4 numbers add up exactly to 168.04 gigawatts, a check run directly against the ministry own dataset rather than taken from a news summary of it.

Weighed against the rest of the world

The International Renewable Energy Agency own count puts global solar capacity at 2,392 gigawatts at the end of 2025, up 510.3 gigawatts during the year. India added 37.0 gigawatts of solar capacity in calendar year 2025 on the agency own count, the second largest national addition after China at 315.1 gigawatts and ahead of the United States at 34.0 gigawatts. Dividing India own addition by the world total gives about 7.25% of all the solar capacity the world put up in 2025, a share calculated here from the agency own 2 figures rather than stated by the agency itself. The agency figure covers the calendar year, January through December, so it does not line up exactly with India own fiscal year addition of 44.61 gigawatts, which runs April through March instead.