In the first half of this year (1H 2019), Azure Power, ReNew Power, Sprng Energy, and Tata Power emerged as the top four developers of utility-scale solar power projects in India in terms of installed capacity, according to Mercom’s recently released India Market Leaderboard 1H 2019. Together, these four developers accounted for nearly 47% of the total installations.

Utility-scale solar accounted for 83% of the capacity additions during 1H 2019 at 2.7 GW, while cumulative Large-scale solar installations in India reached 27.7 GW capacity as of June 2019.

The top 10 solar power developers accounted for nearly 84% of the total installed capacity.

Azure Power was the top project developer in 1H 2019, with a market share of 15.5%.  According to Mercom’s India Market Leaderboard 1H 2019, Azure Power installed over 400 MWs of large-scale solar projects during 1H 2019.

ReNew Power was second in terms of large-scale projects installed in 1H in India with a market share of 12.9%. Sprng Energy was third with a 9.2% market share.

India’s solar installations, including both rooftop and large-scale recorded in the first half of the calendar year 2019, totaled 3.2 GW, and the country’s cumulative installed solar capacity is 31.5 GW.

In the market leaderboard for 2018, ACME Solar was the top utility-scale solar power project developer with a market share of 9.7%, while Adani was a close second with a 9.5% share.

At the end of 1H 2019, five companies had a cumulative project development pipeline of over 1.5 GW apiece. ACME Solar had the largest project pipeline as of June 2019.

According to Mercom India Research, ACME Solar and Adani were the top two utility-scale solar power developers cumulatively as of June 2019.

ACME Solar, SB Energy, Azure, Renew, and Adani lead the project development pipeline list in 1H in 2019.

The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has been trying to expedite and streamline the process of developing large-scale solar projects in the country and recently issued amendments to its guidelines for the competitive bidding process. These amendments attempt at removing hurdles of the utility-scale solar project developers by addressing issues of payment security mechanism, curtailment of power, land acquisition, timely tariff adoption, among others.

With 2020 looking a lot more promising, we can expect to see more developers jumping back into the fray creating more competition.

Mercom’s India 1H 2019 Solar Market Leaderboard report goes into a detailed breakdown of top developers and their growth profile.

A complete list of developers and their portfolio is available through Mercom’s India Solar Market Share Tracker.

Image credit: Azure Power