https://www.energy-alternatives.eu/en/linkedin/2026-10-02-charbon-inde-facteur-de-charge.html https://www.energy-alternatives.eu/en/linkedin/2026-10-02-charbon-inde-facteur-de-charge.html
Energy alternatives

Solar PV versus coal

  • Oct 02, 2026

See the post and its comments on LinkedIn · published on 2 October 2026 · all posts

Solar PV versus coal
Three charts side by side. Left, the load factor of India's coal plants, April-to-March fiscal years: 73.5 % in 2011-12, 54.5 % at the 2020-21 trough, 69.1 % in 2023-24, 65.2 % in 2025-26 (provisional). Centre, over two years, 2023-24 to 2025-26, what was built and what was generated, by source: 68 GW of solar, 10 of wind, 11 of coal, 91 GW in total; on the generation side, +59 TWh of solar, +36 of hydro, +23 of wind, and 14 TWh less coal, for demand up 109 TWh. Right, the cost of a coal MWh to the buyer as a function of load factor: the existing fleet goes from €43/MWh at 85 % to €48/MWh today, a new plant well above, against solar plus storage awarded at €48/MWh for 25 years. Sources: Central Electricity Authority, Ember, SECI, ECB.

The 2025-26 point is provisional: the CEA will not publish its Growth Book 2026 until November. Capacity as on 31 March 2026 (228.56 GW) is primary; generation (1,281 TWh) and load factor (65.18 %) are relayed by the Indian trade press citing the CEA, and cross-checked four independent ways in sources.md. Perimeters must not be mixed: the CEA counts utilities, Ember and Global Energy Monitor also count industrial captive plants, some twenty GW more.

The text of the post

In two years, India has added 11 gigawatts of coal power plants. But with the 68 gigawatts of solar added alongside, its coal generation has not moved. Critics of renewables will no doubt conclude that developing renewables means developing coal. Let us look at the details.

Indian electricity demand rose by 109 terawatt-hours in two years, or 6 %. That increase was covered entirely by low-carbon sources: solar, wind, hydro and nuclear. Coal-fired generation fell by 14 TWh, despite the new capacity.

So solar is not closing plants. It is taking away their operating hours. India’s coal fleet keeps growing while its output stalls.

You can see it in the load factor of coal plants: 69.1 % in 2023-24, 65.2 % in 2025-26. The fleet grew by 5 %, its output fell by 1 %. This is not India building too fast, as it did in 2012-2017; it is that demand growth no longer goes to coal but to solar, wind and hydro: new capacity, but also more favourable winds and rains.

This small beginning sets off a loop that could be virtuous in Europe but is less obvious in India, because power there does not go much through a short-term market like ours. Coal power is bought under long-term contracts, a kind of 25-year “feed-in tariff”, so a falling load factor, which in Europe would mean falling revenue and closure, means higher tariffs for end consumers there. Note that India’s dispatchable capacity, 309 GW, is barely above peak demand, 271 GW in May 2026, but Indian sunshine varies less across the seasons than in Europe (latitudes from 8 to 37°!) and India now awards almost no solar without storage: at the end of 2025, of 4.6 GW of projects awarded in one quarter, 4.5 GW came with storage. The government acknowledges that distribution companies no longer want “plain” solar: 69 GW of projects awarded, 24 GW of contracts signed. The latest auction produced a solar-plus-battery project (with an imposed delivery profile) at €48/MWh.

Sources: Central Electricity Authority, MNRE, Carbon Brief / CREA, Ember, SECI, JMK Research. Data, code and figures on my website.

Sources

Data

  • donnees_inde_plf_cea.csv — The load factor of coal and lignite plants as published by the CEA, 1985-86 to 2025-26 (the last point is provisional). This is the left-hand curve.
  • donnees_inde_mix_cea.csv — Installed capacity on 31 March 2024, 2025 and 2026, and gross generation in fiscal years 2023-24, 2024-25 and 2025-26, by source (CEA). These are the two waterfalls; the file header gives the groupings and the May 2025 accounting removal.
  • donnees_inde_cout_charbon_ember.csv — The two-part tariff (fixed charge, energy charge) of the existing coal fleet and of a new plant, in rupees per kWh at an 85 % load factor, from Ember. This is the right-hand curve, converted to €/MWh at the ECB rate for September 2026.
  • donnees_inde_charbon_cea.csv — Coal and lignite capacity, generation and load factor, 2011-12 to 2025-26 (CEA), for the detailed figure of the fleet and its output.
  • donnees_inde_charbon_ember.csv — Consistency check in calendar years, wider perimeter (Ember, captive plants included).

Code

To reproduce the figure:

python3 build_planche.py           # la planche du post, les deux langues
python3 build_figure.py            # figure détaillée : capacité, production, facteur de charge
python3 build_cascade.py           # figure détaillée : cascades par source, 2023-24 → 2025-26
python3 build_cout.py              # figure détaillée : coût selon le facteur de charge

The panel imports the three scripts of the detailed figures and adds no computation. The cost curve is a formula with no fitted parameter: energy charge + fixed charge × 85 / load factor. The waterfall checks that its steps add up to the total published by the CEA.

All files of this post (figures, data, scripts) are in the folder 2026-10-02-charbon-inde-facteur-de-charge of the public repository.

Code under the MIT licence; texts and figures under CC BY 4.0; data remain under their producer’s licence.

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