NEW DELHI: India’s record expansion of solar power is creating a curious situation for the grid. The expansion is delivering cheap electricity during the day, but the situation reverses at night.
A working paper released by the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM), authored by its member Sanjeev Sanyal and joint director Satvik Dev, shows that rapid solar deployment, without matching investments in energy storage and demand management, is making the national grid increasingly expensive.
Titled “The Duck and The Camel: Tracing the Net Load on the Indian Power Grid”, the paper highlights India’s shifting power architecture and notes that while solar successfully displaces fossil-fuel generation during daylight hours, it forces conventional power plants to ramp their output up and down much more aggressively to meet the evening demand.
It also causes price fluctuation in the market. During May 2026, electricity traded on the day-ahead market at only Rs 1.11 per unit around midday, but jumped to Rs 9.71 per unit at night, frequently hitting the market ceiling of Rs 10 per unit.
The scale of this challenge was visible on May 21, when India recorded its highest-ever electricity demand met of 270.8 gigawatts. Around 11:15 am, peak solar production absorbed a major share of the load, causing the net load—total demand minus solar generation—to fall to 169.2 gigawatts.
By 10:45 pm, as solar output dropped to zero and household cooling demand peaked, conventional generators had to increase output to 252 gigawatts. In less than 12 hours, conventional plants had to manage a surge of 83 gigawatts to bridge the gap.
This daily shifting places severe operational stress on traditional thermal power stations. Coal plants are engineered to run consistently. Constantly ramping them up and down fractures equipment, increases maintenance costs and lowers fuel efficiency. Also, because the grid lacks the transmission infrastructure to handle the midday spike of clean energy, operators resort to solar curtailment.
The EAC-PM report estimates that India wasted an average of 24 gigawatt-hours of solar generation every day during May 2026.