Cabinet clears a 1.86 lakh crore grid plan to move 135 GW of renewables

The Union Cabinet on 30 September cleared a 1,86,405 crore rupee plan to build the state-level lines and batteries that India's renewable target keeps running into. The scheme is called PM DHARA, Developing Harmony and Accelerating Renewable Energy Access in the briefing Ashwini Vaishnaw gave, and Developing Harmonized and Accelerated Renewable energy Access in the Economic Times account of the same announcement. The money and the megawatts are the same in both: 135 GW of renewable power to be evacuated, and 50 GWh of battery storage.

Of the outlay, 1,36,378 crore rupees goes to building and upgrading transmission inside the states. 50,000 crore rupees goes to battery systems. State transmission utilities will carry the work. New greenfield lines will be awarded by tariff-based competitive bidding. The winning transmission service provider builds, owns, operates and maintains the asset. The scheme is scheduled to finish in 2033.

Why the Cabinet spent the money on wires

Vaishnaw, the information and broadcasting minister, said the point of DHARA is the variation that solar and wind put on the grid. India has said it wants 500 GW of non-fossil capacity by 2030. He put current non-fossil capacity at 270 GW and called the 2030 mark plausible. The Economic Times account of the same briefing tied the scheme to a later marker, 900 GW of non-fossil capacity by 2035. The two figures are not in conflict if one is a waypoint and the other is a later aim. They do show how far the wire plan is being asked to stretch.

The constraint is already measurable. Ember, in a May 2026 report, found that India lost 300 GWh of renewable energy in the first quarter of 2026 because the lines could not take it. Generation has grown faster than the network that moves it. A lost gigawatt-hour is power that was available and could not be delivered. At the scale of a single quarter, 300 GWh is the output of a mid-sized plant running for weeks. DHARA is the Cabinet's answer to that gap, aimed at the state networks rather than only at the inter-state green corridors already being built.

Who builds, and who gets the battery money

Competitive bidding for the new lines is meant to keep the capital cost inside a tariff that state regulators can pass through. The model is familiar from the inter-state projects Power Grid and private licensees already run. What is new is the volume inside state boundaries, and the 50 GWh of batteries sitting beside the lines. Batteries are there to soak up midday solar and release it after the sun drops, which is the hour when the Ember curtailment tends to bite.

Renewable developers are also in line for support on storage projects, on the Economic Times account of Vaishnaw's remarks. That is a second stream beside the 50,000 crore rupee battery line. The split matters for who carries the risk. A transmission licensee earns a regulated or bid tariff whether the wind blows. A developer-owned battery earns money only if it is dispatched. DHARA puts public money on both sides of that line.

The number that will show whether it worked

The test is not the sanction. It is whether the 300 GWh quarterly loss shrinks as the first packages are awarded. Bidding, land, and state regulatory approval have slowed earlier green-corridor packages by years. A 2033 end date leaves seven years. The first packages have to be in the ground well before that if the 2030 capacity target is going to have somewhere to go. Vaishnaw did not give a year-by-year award schedule on Wednesday. That schedule is the document state utilities and bidders will ask for next.