India’s renewable energy capacity is growing rapidly, positioning the country to become the world’s second-largest growth market for renewables by 2030. According to the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), India is adding 15-25 GW of renewable energy capacity each year. Praveen Kakulte, CEO of POWERCON Group, a renewable energy asset management company, talks to ET Digital about the significant rise of the country’s renewable sector, Powercon’s contribution, the emerging technologies shaping the industry, and more. Edited excerpts:
Economic Times (ET): How has India’s wind energy evolved over the years, and where does it stand today?
Praveen Kakulte (PK): India’s wind energy journey began in 1985 by experimentation with ~50kW wind turbines through collaborative efforts of India’s C-WET and RISO of Denmark. It took nearly 15 years (1985-2000) for India to register its first GW of installed wind capacity, all promoted through a variety of tax incentives and benefits that developed a depreciation class market, quickly squaring off total investment in 2 to 5 years. Wind turbine sizes from 100 to 850 kW were witnessed during this sub-MW class wind era.
The second block of 10 years, from 2000 to 2010, marked a 10-time growth, demonstrating the addition of another 10 GW, with MW-class turbines. Policies on Renewable Purchase Obligations (RPOs), state-level feed-in tariffs (FITs)/production tax incentives (PTIs), and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) by virtue of India ratifying the Kyoto Protocol boosted the growth.
The third block of 15 years, from 2010 to 2025, added 40 GW, averaging installations of nearly 2.75 GW per year. The turbine sizes grew from MW-class to multi-MW class, whereby currently 3-5 MW turbine size has become the basic benchmark. Grid-friendly attributes, forecasting & scheduling, and predictability to control the uncontrollable resource eventually transformed a windmill/wind turbine into a wind power plant competing with the techno-economics of fossil fuel power plants. It’s an era of the independent power producers (IPPs), who, with large-scale projects through tariff-based competitive bidding, discovered the lowest tariffs of all time.
ET: How is POWERCON contributing to India’s wind energy transformation?
PK: India has an onshore wind potential of 1,163 GW at 150 metres and ranks No. 4 in the world, with 53 GW of installed wind capacity. The country is likely to surpass Germany soon to be among the top 3. India’s current wind turbine manufacturing capacity is in excess of 16-17 GW/year. Ready to attain 100 GW of wind installations by 2030, India will install over the next five years as many GW as it did over the last 40 years. The country is shaping the global clean energy narrative by executing one of the world’s most ambitious energy transitions for a sustainable future.
POWERCON’s contribution to India’s clean energy transition is by being a partner in the performance of IPPs and OEMs to harness winds profitably; by being a Total Solution Provider across the RE delivery chain, delivering more MWh of energy per MW of installed power over an enhanced lifetime at an optimised LCOE; and by being India’s capacity builder to develop university-accredited wind commandos at its Centre of Renewable Energy (CORE Academy, Pune) to fight technology obsolescence and re-engineer solutions at its Centre for Engineering Excellence (CFEE, Pune).
ET: How are technologies like AI (Artificial Intelligence) and IoT (Internet of Things) transforming the renewable energy sector?
PK: The use of IoT, ML (Machine Learnings), and AI are the fundamentals to generate intelligence and actionable insights. IoT enables capture of data signals from various sensors, gadgets, devices, equipment, etc.; collects the information intelligence; and communicates/exchanges it over optical, wired, Wi-Fi, GSM, LoRA, etc. to enable its further processing & computation. The continuous data flow is the basis for AI-driven analytics & derivations.
AI is about processing information and data to analyse, draw logical conclusions, predict and trigger actionable intelligence. AI algorithms predict when a turbine might fail or suggest optimal blade angles for maximum efficiency.
The use of ML & AI in renewables provides a total clutch on enhancing product performance. AI-driven triggers on forecasting, scheduling and power dispatch permit maximising of returns on the investments as well as supporting balancing the variable RE supply with dynamic consumption.
AI + IoT data from drones, satellites, and LIDAR helps in resource assessment, and, thus, in identifying ideal sites for solar farms or wind parks based on terrain, climate, and infrastructure. Moving further, the use of digital twins can simulate performance before construction, reducing project risks.
ET: Globally, offshore wind projects have been struggling. There are also supply chain procurement and compliance issues with the US and Europe. Do you think India will also face those issues?
PK: Truly speaking, India has exploited merely 4.6% of its onshore wind potential. We stand at just 53/1163 GW. India is the 7th-largest country, occupying a land mass of 2.2% of the world’s land area; however, it is among the top 5 in richness of inland renewable energy resources. Our focus must be on capitalising on what and where we have in abundance rather than pursuing the offshore, which has an estimated wind potential of a mere ~70 GW across the Gujarat and Tamil Nadu coastlines.
India’s offshore wind potential is just 6% of its onshore wind potential. Incidentally, the offshore wind capital costs are 2.5 to 3 times higher than those of onshore (foundations, deeper water, installation at sea, undersea cabling), and so also are the O&M costs (access, marine environment, maintenance). Even with higher-capacity turbines and with substantially higher throughput, the levelised cost of energy (LCOE) for offshore wind remains a challenge.
So, in principle, the best India should do over the next decade is to work hard on its mainland and simultaneously enable capacity building by exporting talent to work on foreign offshore projects.
ET: Tell us about Asia’s first Energy Studio in Pune.
PK: The Energy Studio is a remote monitoring, command & control, analytics, and reporting centre powered by its partner BaxEnergy’s asset management platform that governs the integrated performance of cleantech assets in real time. Its forward compatibility and unlimited scalability provide a cutting edge for progressive conglomerates and utility-scale IPPs.
At its core, POWERCON’s Energy Studio is Asia’s first independent service provider-operated (ISP-operated), OEM-neutral, multi-technology, integrated single-view asset management platform. With over 2.5 GW of renewable assets in India under controlled governance and 40+ GW across 23 countries globally monitored remotely via digital integration, the platform is becoming indispensable for IPPs, infrastructure operators, and energy investors who are navigating the operational complexity of modern renewable and cleantech systems.
In deployment, Energy Studio is a digital command & control centre integrating multi-make wind, solar, geo, hydro, bio, battery storage and hybrid configurations into a unified, real-time operational environment that enables asset performance governance with ease and efficiency. In a typical war-room set-up, operators and data scientists interact through integrated dashboards, live data visualisations, and a command interface that cuts across technologies and geographies.
ET: The government has recently launched a national policy for geothermal energy. What is the potential for geothermal energy in India, and how is POWERCON contributing to this?
PK: India’s geology includes young fold mountains, rift zones, and sedimentary basins favourable for geothermal activity, i.e., using natural heat stored beneath the earth’s surface. Over 300 geothermal sites countrywide with a theoretical potential of nearly 10.6 GW look promising for electricity generation and direct use applications, i.e., heating for industrial, agricultural or residential purposes.
Though India’s geothermal potential is modest compared to solar or wind, it is significant in the sense of providing 24x7, controllable baseload renewable generation. With a low land footprint requirement, geothermal offers a non-weather-dependent stable output, winning over the other intermittent RE sources.
With the newly notified national geothermal policy, the regulatory and incentive framework is now in place to begin scaling the technology. High exploration costs for drilling wells, limited experience and lack of grid connectivity in major geothermal zones like Ladakh and Andaman are challenges to overcome through short-term pilot projects of ~100 MW by 2030. Scaling geothermal to multi-GW and its integration with other cleantech sources is a charted path over a decade, up to 2040.
POWERCON is closely monitoring developments, and as the sector matures, we will serve opportunities within this emerging renewable space in the future.
Economic Times (ET): How has India’s wind energy evolved over the years, and where does it stand today?
Praveen Kakulte (PK): India’s wind energy journey began in 1985 by experimentation with ~50kW wind turbines through collaborative efforts of India’s C-WET and RISO of Denmark. It took nearly 15 years (1985-2000) for India to register its first GW of installed wind capacity, all promoted through a variety of tax incentives and benefits that developed a depreciation class market, quickly squaring off total investment in 2 to 5 years. Wind turbine sizes from 100 to 850 kW were witnessed during this sub-MW class wind era.
The second block of 10 years, from 2000 to 2010, marked a 10-time growth, demonstrating the addition of another 10 GW, with MW-class turbines. Policies on Renewable Purchase Obligations (RPOs), state-level feed-in tariffs (FITs)/production tax incentives (PTIs), and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) by virtue of India ratifying the Kyoto Protocol boosted the growth.
The third block of 15 years, from 2010 to 2025, added 40 GW, averaging installations of nearly 2.75 GW per year. The turbine sizes grew from MW-class to multi-MW class, whereby currently 3-5 MW turbine size has become the basic benchmark. Grid-friendly attributes, forecasting & scheduling, and predictability to control the uncontrollable resource eventually transformed a windmill/wind turbine into a wind power plant competing with the techno-economics of fossil fuel power plants. It’s an era of the independent power producers (IPPs), who, with large-scale projects through tariff-based competitive bidding, discovered the lowest tariffs of all time.
ET: How is POWERCON contributing to India’s wind energy transformation?
PK: India has an onshore wind potential of 1,163 GW at 150 metres and ranks No. 4 in the world, with 53 GW of installed wind capacity. The country is likely to surpass Germany soon to be among the top 3. India’s current wind turbine manufacturing capacity is in excess of 16-17 GW/year. Ready to attain 100 GW of wind installations by 2030, India will install over the next five years as many GW as it did over the last 40 years. The country is shaping the global clean energy narrative by executing one of the world’s most ambitious energy transitions for a sustainable future.
POWERCON’s contribution to India’s clean energy transition is by being a partner in the performance of IPPs and OEMs to harness winds profitably; by being a Total Solution Provider across the RE delivery chain, delivering more MWh of energy per MW of installed power over an enhanced lifetime at an optimised LCOE; and by being India’s capacity builder to develop university-accredited wind commandos at its Centre of Renewable Energy (CORE Academy, Pune) to fight technology obsolescence and re-engineer solutions at its Centre for Engineering Excellence (CFEE, Pune).
ET: How are technologies like AI (Artificial Intelligence) and IoT (Internet of Things) transforming the renewable energy sector?
PK: The use of IoT, ML (Machine Learnings), and AI are the fundamentals to generate intelligence and actionable insights. IoT enables capture of data signals from various sensors, gadgets, devices, equipment, etc.; collects the information intelligence; and communicates/exchanges it over optical, wired, Wi-Fi, GSM, LoRA, etc. to enable its further processing & computation. The continuous data flow is the basis for AI-driven analytics & derivations.
AI is about processing information and data to analyse, draw logical conclusions, predict and trigger actionable intelligence. AI algorithms predict when a turbine might fail or suggest optimal blade angles for maximum efficiency.
The use of ML & AI in renewables provides a total clutch on enhancing product performance. AI-driven triggers on forecasting, scheduling and power dispatch permit maximising of returns on the investments as well as supporting balancing the variable RE supply with dynamic consumption.
AI + IoT data from drones, satellites, and LIDAR helps in resource assessment, and, thus, in identifying ideal sites for solar farms or wind parks based on terrain, climate, and infrastructure. Moving further, the use of digital twins can simulate performance before construction, reducing project risks.
ET: Globally, offshore wind projects have been struggling. There are also supply chain procurement and compliance issues with the US and Europe. Do you think India will also face those issues?
PK: Truly speaking, India has exploited merely 4.6% of its onshore wind potential. We stand at just 53/1163 GW. India is the 7th-largest country, occupying a land mass of 2.2% of the world’s land area; however, it is among the top 5 in richness of inland renewable energy resources. Our focus must be on capitalising on what and where we have in abundance rather than pursuing the offshore, which has an estimated wind potential of a mere ~70 GW across the Gujarat and Tamil Nadu coastlines.
India’s offshore wind potential is just 6% of its onshore wind potential. Incidentally, the offshore wind capital costs are 2.5 to 3 times higher than those of onshore (foundations, deeper water, installation at sea, undersea cabling), and so also are the O&M costs (access, marine environment, maintenance). Even with higher-capacity turbines and with substantially higher throughput, the levelised cost of energy (LCOE) for offshore wind remains a challenge.
So, in principle, the best India should do over the next decade is to work hard on its mainland and simultaneously enable capacity building by exporting talent to work on foreign offshore projects.
ET: Tell us about Asia’s first Energy Studio in Pune.
PK: The Energy Studio is a remote monitoring, command & control, analytics, and reporting centre powered by its partner BaxEnergy’s asset management platform that governs the integrated performance of cleantech assets in real time. Its forward compatibility and unlimited scalability provide a cutting edge for progressive conglomerates and utility-scale IPPs.
At its core, POWERCON’s Energy Studio is Asia’s first independent service provider-operated (ISP-operated), OEM-neutral, multi-technology, integrated single-view asset management platform. With over 2.5 GW of renewable assets in India under controlled governance and 40+ GW across 23 countries globally monitored remotely via digital integration, the platform is becoming indispensable for IPPs, infrastructure operators, and energy investors who are navigating the operational complexity of modern renewable and cleantech systems.
In deployment, Energy Studio is a digital command & control centre integrating multi-make wind, solar, geo, hydro, bio, battery storage and hybrid configurations into a unified, real-time operational environment that enables asset performance governance with ease and efficiency. In a typical war-room set-up, operators and data scientists interact through integrated dashboards, live data visualisations, and a command interface that cuts across technologies and geographies.
ET: The government has recently launched a national policy for geothermal energy. What is the potential for geothermal energy in India, and how is POWERCON contributing to this?
PK: India’s geology includes young fold mountains, rift zones, and sedimentary basins favourable for geothermal activity, i.e., using natural heat stored beneath the earth’s surface. Over 300 geothermal sites countrywide with a theoretical potential of nearly 10.6 GW look promising for electricity generation and direct use applications, i.e., heating for industrial, agricultural or residential purposes.
Though India’s geothermal potential is modest compared to solar or wind, it is significant in the sense of providing 24x7, controllable baseload renewable generation. With a low land footprint requirement, geothermal offers a non-weather-dependent stable output, winning over the other intermittent RE sources.
With the newly notified national geothermal policy, the regulatory and incentive framework is now in place to begin scaling the technology. High exploration costs for drilling wells, limited experience and lack of grid connectivity in major geothermal zones like Ladakh and Andaman are challenges to overcome through short-term pilot projects of ~100 MW by 2030. Scaling geothermal to multi-GW and its integration with other cleantech sources is a charted path over a decade, up to 2040.
POWERCON is closely monitoring developments, and as the sector matures, we will serve opportunities within this emerging renewable space in the future.
