India Awards 1.5 GW of Firm Renewable Peak Power at Around €54/MWh

Photo by Pranav Panchal on Unsplash

India’s state-owned Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) has completed another competitive tender for Firm and Dispatchable Renewable Energy (FDRE) projects designed to provide guaranteed electricity and capacity during peak-demand periods.

Unlike conventional renewable energy auctions, this FDRE tender requires projects to supply power specifically during “non-solar hours” — periods when solar generation is unavailable, particularly after sunset.

The model is designed to address India’s rapidly growing evening electricity peak while improving power-system reliability without relying solely on additional fossil-fuel generation.

SECI’s FDRE-IX tender covered 1,500 MW of contracted capacity and 6,000 MWh of assured peak supply, effectively requiring enough storage to deliver the full contracted capacity for four hours. SECI describes the procurement as 1,500 MW × 4 hours of assured peak renewable supply connected to India’s interstate transmission system.

Three companies won capacity in the auction:

• Waaree Forever Energies: 700 MW at INR 5.99/kWh
• NTPC Renewable Energy: 500 MW at INR 6.00/kWh
• ACME Solar: 300 MW at INR 6.00/kWh

The lowest tariff was therefore INR 5.99/kWh, with practically the entire auction clearing at INR 6/kWh.

At the exchange rate on 24 August 2026, one Indian rupee was worth roughly €0.00894. The winning tariffs therefore correspond to approximately €0.0535–0.0536/kWh, or €53.5–53.6/MWh.

That is a striking price considering that the product is not simply intermittent solar or wind generation. Developers have to make renewable electricity available during a predetermined period when solar output is absent, which requires a combination of generation assets, storage and energy-management optimisation.

Firm renewable power still carries a premium

The result nevertheless illustrates the additional cost of converting variable renewable electricity into a dispatchable product.

In October 2025, an Indian auction for solar projects paired with four-hour battery storage — but without the same firm peak-delivery requirements — produced tariffs of just INR 2.86–2.87/kWh, equivalent to roughly €25.6/MWh at today’s exchange rate.

The new assured-peak product therefore costs a little more than twice as much per kilowatt-hour.

The comparison should be treated carefully because the contractual products are different. The approximately €54/MWh tariff applies to electricity delivered during the specified peak window and reflects the value and cost of shifting renewable electricity to a period when it is particularly valuable to the system. A conventional solar-plus-storage tariff does not necessarily impose the same dispatch obligations.

The new result is also below the price discovered in a comparable Indian assured-peak auction held earlier in 2026.

Under the FDRE arrangement, the tariff applies to the contracted peak-period electricity. The winning projects will enter into 25-year power purchase agreements (PPAs) with SECI. Renewable electricity generated outside the contracted delivery periods can potentially be monetised separately, including through wholesale markets or bilateral agreements with third parties.

This additional revenue opportunity is important for understanding the surprisingly low auction price: the INR 6/kWh tariff does not necessarily represent the entire revenue stream of the renewable-generation and storage assets.

Around €320,000 of contracted electricity per four-hour cycle

At 6,000 MWh of peak-period delivery and approximately €53.6/MWh, one theoretical full four-hour contracted delivery cycle has a value of about €322,000.

The sheer scale is also notable. A 6 GWh storage requirement is comparable to the combined battery capacity of roughly 80,000 modern electric cars equipped with 75 kWh batteries, although stationary battery systems operate under very different technical and cycling requirements.

India is increasingly experimenting with procurement structures that attach a value not merely to renewable electricity production, but to when that electricity is available.

Another example is round-the-clock, or RTC, renewable supply. In August 2026, SECI completed a tender for 1,000 MW of firm and dispatchable round-the-clock renewable power designed to provide characteristics closer to conventional thermal generation. The tariff reached INR 5.25–5.26/kWh, or around €47/MWh. SECI’s tender archive confirms the 1 GW FDRE-RTC procurement.

The roughly INR 0.74/kWh difference between that RTC tariff and the latest assured-peak tariff also demonstrates that electricity delivered during the most difficult hours can command a premium even when both products are based on firm renewable supply.

Why the Indian model matters for Europe

The Indian tender is particularly interesting from a European perspective because Europe faces essentially the same structural challenge as solar penetration increases: very cheap or even negatively priced electricity around midday can coexist with much more expensive electricity after sunset.

Battery storage can arbitrage that difference, but India is taking the concept further by directly procuring a renewable electricity product with a defined availability requirement.

European markets have so far tended to procure the underlying elements separately — renewable electricity through auctions or PPAs, storage through merchant markets, capacity mechanisms and dedicated support schemes, and grid services through balancing markets.

For example, Greece has used dedicated competitive BESS tenders, including procurement requiring at least four hours of storage, but its support structure combines mechanisms such as investment support and operating payments rather than setting one directly comparable price for firm renewable electricity delivered during peak hours.

This makes the Indian result difficult to compare directly with a European solar or battery auction. Nevertheless, around €54/MWh for guaranteed four-hour renewable peak supply provides a useful international benchmark.

As European electricity systems move toward higher shares of wind and solar, the key economic question is increasingly shifting from “How cheaply can renewable electricity be generated?” to “How cheaply can clean electricity be delivered when the system actually needs it?”

India’s latest FDRE auction suggests that the cost gap between intermittent and dispatchable renewable power is already narrowing rapidly.