India's Leap into Solar Energy Solutions: What’s There for Next 10 Years?

Published on Feb 12, 2024

The world is facing a critical juncture in its energy journey. Climate change demands an urgent shift away from fossil fuels towards cleaner, sustainable alternatives. Recognizing this urgency, India has set ambitious renewable energy targets, aiming to achieve 450 GW of installed renewable energy capacity by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2070. Solar energy, with its abundant potential and declining costs, sits at the heart of this ambitious plan.

Recent developments in India’s renewable energy space suggest a significant leap forward. The government has allocated a record $19 billion towards renewable energy in the 2023-24 budget, reflecting a strong commitment to the sector. Additionally, India witnessed a historic high of 10 GW of solar installations in the first quarter of 2023, demonstrating the industry’s momentum. However, challenges remain, including grid integration bottlenecks, financing constraints, and dependence on imported solar equipment.

India’s Current Solar Energy Landscape

India currently boasts an impressive installed solar capacity of over 60 GW, ranking fourth globally. This growth has been driven by factors like falling solar panel prices, supportive government policies, and increasing awareness about clean energy. However, challenges persist:

Grid Integration: Integrating intermittent solar power into the grid poses challenges, requiring investments in grid modernization and storage solutions.
Financing: While costs are declining, access to affordable finance remains a hurdle for smaller developers and projects.
Manufacturing Dependence: India currently imports a significant portion of its solar equipment, making it vulnerable to price fluctuations and supply chain disruptions.

Despite these challenges, the sector is witnessing growing dynamism:

Decentralized Solar: Rooftop solar installations are witnessing rapid growth, empowering individuals and businesses to take charge of their energy needs.
State-Level Initiatives: Several states are leading the charge with ambitious solar targets and innovative policies.
Emerging Technologies: Innovations like bifacial panels and perovskite cells hold immense potential for future efficiency gains.

This dynamic landscape, coupled with a focus on technological advancements, paves the way for a brighter solar future for India. The next section will delve into how technology is transforming various aspects of solar energy, from development to deployment and beyond.

Technological Powerhouse: Driving India’s Solar Leap

India’s ambitious clean energy goals hinge on a crucial factor: empowering technology to unlock the full potential of solar energy. From boosting efficiency to streamlining operations, advancements in various areas are propelling the nation’s solar journey forward.

Redefining Efficiency

Indian manufacturers like Waaree Energies are pushing the boundaries with bifacial panels exceeding 21.9% efficiency, maximizing energy generation per unit area. Perovskite technology, championed by Sky Solar and RenewSys, holds immense promise, potentially pushing efficiencies beyond 30% in the coming years, and further revolutionizing solar power output.

Smart Grids

One of the most significant changes is the introduction of dynamic pricing models, enabled by smart grids. These models allow consumers to adjust their energy usage based on real-time pricing information, leading to cost savings and more efficient energy use. For example, in the US, solar installation companies like Green Brilliance and others offer smart apps to their customers so that they can have complete supervision of their energy production and consumption. Such solutions also highlight the crucial role of tech companies in making energy management understandable to consumers. Green Brilliance’s customer app developed by Mantra Labs is a vivid example of the same.

Blockchain Empowers Communities

Peer-to-peer energy trading is no longer a dream. Companies like Power Ledger are piloting platforms in India, enabling communities to directly trade solar energy using blockchain technology. This fosters energy independence, community resilience, and a more distributed and democratic energy landscape.

Domestic Battery Powerhouse

India is taking decisive steps towards self-reliance in battery storage. The Tesla Megafactory in Pune aims to produce advanced L-ion batteries with a capacity of 50 GWh annually, significantly boosting domestic battery production and storage capacity, and ultimately reducing dependence on imports.

AI-Powered Construction Revolution

Companies like RenewSys India are leveraging robotic systems for solar module assembly, significantly increasing production capacity and accuracy. This automation not only streamlines deployment but also ensures consistent quality and faster project completion. Additionally, companies like Mahindra EPC are utilizing drones for real-time monitoring of construction progress, enabling better project management and quality control.

This is just a glimpse into the technological marvels propelling India’s solar journey. Continuous innovation, fostering talent, and implementing supportive policies are crucial to keep the momentum going. With a united push, India can not only achieve its ambitious renewable energy targets but also emerge as a global leader in the clean energy transition, powered by the ingenuity of its technological advancements.

India’s leap into solar energy solutions is driven by a powerful combination of ambition, necessity, and innovation. By leveraging cutting-edge technologies and fostering a dynamic ecosystem, India can not only achieve its ambitious renewable energy targets but also emerge as a global leader in the clean energy transition. The next 10 years hold immense potential, and the journey promises to be transformative, not just for India’s energy sector, but for its entire economy and environment.

Further Reading: Tech Savvy CX: A Game Changer For Solar Industry

Let’s take a trip back in time—2008. Netflix was nothing like the media juggernaut it is today. Back then, they were a DVD-rental-by-mail service trying to go digital. But here’s the kicker: they hit a major pitfall. The internet was booming, and people were binge-watching shows like never before, but Netflix’s infrastructure couldn’t handle the load. Their single, massive system—what techies call a “monolith”—was creaking under pressure. Slow load times and buffering wheels plagued the experience, a nightmare for any platform or app development company trying to scale

That’s when Netflix decided to do something wild—they broke their monolith into smaller pieces. It was microservices, the tech equivalent of turning one giant pizza into bite-sized slices. Instead of one colossal system doing everything from streaming to recommendations, each piece of Netflix’s architecture became a specialist—one service handled streaming, another handled recommendations, another managed user data, and so on.

But microservices alone weren’t enough. What if one slice of pizza burns? Would the rest of the meal be ruined? Netflix wasn’t about to let a burnt crust take down the whole operation. That’s when they introduced the Circuit Breaker Pattern—just like a home electrical circuit that prevents a total blackout when one fuse blows. Their famous Hystrix tool allowed services to fail without taking down the entire platform.

Fast-forward to today: Netflix isn’t just serving you movie marathons, it’s a digital powerhouse, an icon in platform engineering; it’s deploying new code thousands of times per day without breaking a sweat. They handle 208 million subscribers streaming over 1 billion hours of content every week. Trends in Platform engineering transformed Netflix into an application dev platform with self-service capabilities, supporting app developers and fostering a culture of continuous deployment.

Did Netflix bring order to chaos?

Netflix didn’t just solve its own problem. They blazed the trail for a movement: platform engineering. Now, every company wants a piece of that action. What Netflix did was essentially build an internal platform that developers could innovate without dealing with infrastructure headaches, a dream scenario for any application developer or app development company seeking seamless workflows.

And it’s not just for the big players like Netflix anymore. Across industries, companies are using platform engineering to create Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs)—one-stop shops for mobile application developers to create, test, and deploy apps without waiting on traditional IT. According to Gartner, 80% of organizations will adopt platform engineering by 2025 because it makes everything faster and more efficient, a game-changer for any mobile app developer or development software firm.

All anybody has to do is to make sure the tools are actually connected and working together. To make the most of it. That’s where modern trends like self-service platforms and composable architectures come in. You build, you scale, you innovate.achieving what mobile app dev and web-based development needs And all without breaking a sweat.

Is Mantra Labs Redefining Platform Engineering?

We didn’t just learn from Netflix’s playbook; we’re writing our own chapters in platform engineering. One example of this? Our work with one of India’s leading private-sector general insurance companies.

Their existing DevOps system was like Netflix’s old monolith: complex, clunky, and slowing them down. Multiple teams, diverse workflows, and a lack of standardization were crippling their ability to innovate. Worse yet, they were stuck in a ticket-driven approach, which led to reactive fixes rather than proactive growth. Observability gaps meant they were often solving the wrong problems, without any real insight into what was happening under the hood.

That’s where Mantra Labs stepped in. Mantra Labs brought in the pillars of platform engineering:

Standardization: We unified their workflows, creating a single source of truth for teams across the board.

Customization: Our tailored platform engineering approach addressed the unique demands of their various application development teams.

Traceability: With better observability tools, they could now track their workflows, giving them real-time insights into system health and potential bottlenecks—an essential feature for web and app development and agile software development.

We didn’t just slap a band-aid on the problem; we overhauled their entire infrastructure. By centralizing infrastructure management and removing the ticket-driven chaos, we gave them a self-service platform—where teams could deploy new code without waiting in line. The results? Faster workflows, better adoption of tools, and an infrastructure ready for future growth.

But we didn’t stop there. We solved the critical observability gaps—providing real-time data that helped the insurance giant avoid potential pitfalls before they happened. With our approach, they no longer had to “hope” that things would go right. They could see it happening in real-time which is a major advantage in cross-platform mobile application development and cloud-based web hosting.

The Future of Platform Engineering: What’s Next?

As we look forward, platform engineering will continue to drive innovation, enabling companies to build scalable, resilient systems that adapt to future challenges—whether it’s AI-driven automation or self-healing platforms.

If you’re ready to make the leap into platform engineering, Mantra Labs is here to guide you. Whether you’re aiming for smoother workflows, enhanced observability, or scalable infrastructure, we’ve got the tools and expertise to get you there.

India’s Leap into Solar Energy Solutions: What’s There for Next 10 Years?

India’s Current Solar Energy Landscape