India solar PV additions reach 36.6GW, up 43% YoY – Mercom

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Aerial view of a solar PV plant in India from Tata Power
Large-scale solar PV projects in India accounted for nearly 81% of all PV installations in 2025. Image: Tata Power.

Solar PV installations in India reached a record 36.6GW in 2025, a 43% increase from the previous year’s 25GW.

Bolstered by the fact India added more than 30GW of solar PV in a single year for the first time, the country’s cumulative installed capacity reached 136GW at the end of December 2025. Overall, solar PV accounted for 68% of all new power capacity added in 2025.

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Installation figures from Mercom sit between figures shared earlier this year by JMK Research and the Indian government, which registered 37.9GW and 35GW of solar PV additions in 2025, respectively.

Large-scale solar PV accounted for the majority of new capacity added in 2025, with nearly 81%, while rooftop solar contributed with 19%. Large-scale solar projects saw 29.5GW of new capacity installed in 2025, up 31% from the 22.5GW installed in 2024.

In the last quarter of 2025, large-scale solar accounted for 7.6GW, a 12% increase from the previous quarter and up 11% from the same period a year ago, when 6.9GW of utility-scale capacity was added in Q4 2024. During Q4 2025, Tata Power commissioned a 300MW project in the state of Rajasthan.

Open access projects—which allows consumers to directly purchase electricity from independent power producers (IPPs)—represented 26% of large-scale additions alone.

According to Mercom, last year’s solar PV installations record was driven by supportive policies, accelerated project execution and favourable market conditions.

The states of Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra have accounted for the most utility-scale solar PV additions last year with 34%, 28% and 15% respectively. The western state of Maharashtra rose to the third position in 2025, overtaking Andhra Pradesh on the podium for large-scale solar.

Despite a record year for solar PV installations, capacity tendered for utility-scale solar was down year on year by 45%. Indeed, in 2025, nearly 44GW of PV projects were tendered for large-scale solar, when the previous year, that volume had reached 79.5GW.

Auctioned projects had a similar fate, with only 20.9GW auctioned in 2025, down 57% from the 48.1GW registered in 2024.

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