ICRA Prices India's Transmission Gap at Rs 5-6 Trillion Through FY32
As India's renewable buildout collides with a transmission network still catching up, a credit rating agency has put a price tag on the fix.
A third of the 54.8 GW of renewable capacity India commissioned recently is being evacuated through a temporary, interim grid-access route rather than a permanent one, and curtailment under that route climbs to 50 to 60 percent during solar hours in Rajasthan and Gujarat, according to ICRA.
The finding lands as India's renewable pipeline keeps outrunning the wires meant to carry it, a gap this outlet has covered from the generation side. ICRA's report reframes it as a transmission-financing problem with a specific price: the sector needs roughly 20,000 circuit kilometers of new lines and 120 gigavolt-amperes of substation capacity every year just to hit the government's National Electricity Plan-II targets.
That reframing matters because it names a mechanism, not just a symptom. Projects stuck without permanent transmission connectivity are routed through the Temporary General Network Access system, a stopgap that lets generation come online before the wires are ready. ICRA's data shows the stopgap is now absorbing a third of all newly commissioned capacity, concentrated specifically where solar penetration is highest.
Curtailment Concentrates in Rajasthan and Gujarat
ICRA found that 33 percent of the 54.8 GW of recently commissioned renewable capacity was being evacuated through the Temporary General Network Access route as of May 2026. Curtailment under that route peaks during solar generation hours, running 50 to 60 percent in Rajasthan and Gujarat specifically. Southern states, by contrast, have seen comparatively limited curtailment even during peak solar hours, pointing to a regional transmission gap rather than a national one.
Bidding Delays Are the Root Cause, Not Just Volume
ICRA traces the bottleneck to execution failures in the tariff-based competitive bidding route used to award transmission projects. Of the projects commissioned under that route by March 2026, only 12 percent were completed within their scheduled timeline; the rest were delayed by two months to three years, with a median lag of over 10 months. Land acquisition and right-of-way approvals are the recurring blockers.
ICRA Prices the Fix at 5 to 6 Trillion Rupees
To close the gap, ICRA estimates the transmission sector needs an investment of at least 5 to 6 trillion rupees between fiscal 2027 and fiscal 2032. A pipeline of 107 GW of projects, spanning solar, wind, hybrid, hydro, pumped storage and thermal, has already secured grid connectivity and is scheduled for integration into the interstate transmission system through fiscal 2031. Equipment suppliers are already positioning for the spending: outstanding and fresh orders for major transmission equipment more than doubled in fiscal 2026 compared with fiscal 2022.
The immediate cost falls on renewable developers in Rajasthan and Gujarat, who lose revenue every time solar-hour curtailment hits 50 to 60 percent under a route that was only ever meant to be temporary. Transmission equipment suppliers stand to gain from a spending cycle ICRA expects to run through fiscal 2032. State-level exposure is uneven: the same report shows southern India largely avoiding the problem, which raises the question of why solar-heavy northwestern states have not been prioritized for permanent connectivity first.
The deeper signal is about execution risk, not capital availability. ICRA's own data shows the financing case for transmission is already attracting supplier interest, but the same report documents that 88 percent of recent transmission projects missed their scheduled completion date. A spending commitment does not resolve a land acquisition and regulatory approval problem, and until that changes, the temporary access route is likely to keep absorbing new capacity rather than shrinking.
Ankit Jain, vice president at ICRA Limited, said of the bidding delays: "only 12% was done within the scheduled timeline."
What to Watch
Watch how much of the 107 GW pipeline secures permanent transmission connectivity as it moves toward the 2026-27 to 2030-31 integration window, and whether the median 10-month delay on tariff-based bidding projects narrows as the 5 to 6 trillion rupee investment cycle begins. A widening gap between committed capex and completed projects would suggest the curtailment problem in Rajasthan and Gujarat is structural rather than temporary.
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