India's Energy Export Has Grown Significantly: Power Minister R K Singh

India's power export has grown significantly with the world’s third-largest energy guzzler exporting 2,410 million units (MU) to Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan in the financial year 2023 said, Power, New and Renewable Energy Minister R K Singh at an event on Thursday.

This comes on the heels of the “relentless efforts” by the Union Power Ministry adding 185 gigawatts (GW) of power in the last nine years taking the country’s cumulative installed capacity to 416 GW, Singh added.

He emphasised that we are able to become a power-surplus country from being power deficit in the last nine years, marking a decline in energy shortage from 4.2 per cent in FY 2014 to 0.2 per cent in FY 2024.

Furthermore, the minister underlined the availability of power in rural areas, which was about 12.5 hours in 2015, has gone up to 21.48 hours and in urban areas it has gone up to 23.78 hours. 

He stressed that India's energy installation capacity has almost doubled the peak power demand of 223 GW and now the country is able to export to neighbouring countries as well.

The Power Minister then shed light on the thermal power capacity. He said that about 27 GW of thermal power capacity is under active construction and about 24 GW is under survey, investigation and pre-construction stage before being bid out.

Responding on the renewable energy (RE) progress, Singh stated that India’s RE facilities under bids or active construction is about 120 GW.