ReNew Power named most prominent 2019 solar developer: Mercom

ReNew Power has been named India's top utility-scale solar developer in 2019, closely followed by NLC India and Azure Power, according to a survey by Mercom. It found the three firms were responsible for almost 35% of major installations last year, deploying more than 500 MW. ReNew Power was also among the top three developers in terms of overall cumulative installed capacity.

ReNew Power, NLC India, and Azure Power emerged as the top utility-scale solar project developers in India in terms of installed capacity in the calendar year (CY) 2019, according to Mercom’s recently released report: India Solar Market Leaderboard 2020. Together, these three developers accounted for nearly 35% of total large-scale installations in 2019.

The top ten utility-scale project developers in 2019 accounted for approximately 70% of installed capacity. Total large-scale capacity additions amounted to 6.2 GW, of which the top ten developers contributed about 4.3 GW. Large-scale solar installations represented 85% of total installations, and rooftop solar made up the remaining 15%.

While three companies installed more than 500 MW, none of the developers installed more than a GW in a year when utility-scale solar installations declined year-over-year (YoY) by 7%.

India’s solar installations, including both rooftop and large-scale recorded in the calendar year 2019, stood at around 7.3 GW, a 12% decline YoY, and the country’s cumulative installed solar capacity rose to 35.7 GW.

According to the report, Adani, ACME Solar, and ReNew Power were the top three utility-scale solar project developers in terms of overall cumulative installed capacity as of December 2019. Three developers in India have installed more than 2 GW each, and another five developers have installed more than 1 GW of large-scale projects each.

In terms of the utility-scale project pipeline, Azure Power had the largest development pipeline followed by SB Energy, NTPC, ACME Solar, and ReNew Power. Three developers have a project pipeline of more than 2 GW, and four developers have a pipeline of over 1 GW each.