India’s clean energy firms seek better weather data as rules tighten

NEW DELHI: India’s clean energy producers on Wednesday flagged the lack of effective weather forecasting models in the country, as the power regulator proposes stricter rules on how closely developers must adhere to their grid supply commitments.

India’s power regulator, the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission, issued tighter rules in a September draft for wind and solar power producers under the Deviation Settlement Mechanism, a system that fines companies when their actual power supply to the grid strays too far from their forecasts.

The draft framework aims to gradually narrow the permissible gap between the amount of electricity producers commit to supply and what they actually generate and was due to come into effect from April 2026.

In a public hearing, several clean energy developers flagged the absence of precise hyperlocal weather forecasting models in the country that can aid them in meeting their promised power generation to the grid.

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Adani Green Energy, which has the country’s largest clean energy portfolio, said that despite collaborating with several overseas technology firms in Switzerland and France and using deep learning models, it is still facing challenges in predicting hyper-local weather for its projects.

India has a tropical monsoon climate with unpredictable, abrupt weather transitions, making it prone to weather forecasting errors compared with mid-latitudes like Europe and the U.S. that have predictable seasonal cycles, companies said, calling for improved weather forecasting technology.

Meanwhile, the radars deployed by the Indian government are from the disaster management perspective and there is no deployment in the renewable-energy-rich areas to assist in the energy forecasting, representatives of IndiGrid Solar told the commission.

Government-run India Meteorological Department provides the base weather data used for forecasts nationwide, but its data are updated only once every six hours, making accurate short-term forecasting “next to impossible,” they said.

Last week, Reuters reported that the country’s renewable energy ministry had urged the power regulator to delay plans for stricter rules, saying hefty penalties could deter investments into the emerging clean energy sector.