New Delhi, Sept. 24 -- India's power sector is entering a fundamentally different phase of growth that requires generation, transmission, storage and distribution to be planned together, Union Power Secretary Pankaj Agarwal said on Thursday.
India's installed capacity is expected to cross 530 GW by the end of this fiscal year, according to Vipul Tuli, Chair of FICCI's RE CEOs Committee.
BSES Rajdhani Power CEO Abhishek Ranjan said renewable capacity had crossed 300 GW by July 31, 2026, while data centre demand alone is projected to rise from 2.2 GW in 2025 to 12 GW by 2030.
Addressing the 2nd Indian Power Sector Conference organised by FICCI, Agarwal said the new National Electricity Policy was being designed in view of the demands of Viksit Bharat 2047, replacing the policy issued in 2005. "We need to move away from a fragmented approach and look at the power sector as a complete system," he said.
He called for a domestic technology and manufacturing ecosystem across the power value chain, including digitalisation, automation, SCADA, electronics and sensors. "The larger opportunity before us is: Design in India, develop in India and manufacture in India," he said.
Greater variability in demand and uncertainty in generation require innovative solutions to integrate more renewable energy, said Central Electricity Authority Chairperson Ghanshyam Prasad.
"The numbers are important, but what is more important is how we transform the system," he added.
Every unit of electricity saved reduces the need for new infrastructure, said Bureau of Energy Efficiency Director General Krishna Chandra Panigrahy, flagging rising demand from data centres and artificial intelligence.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.