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Wind energy in India 2026: capacity, states, OEMs and offshore

India's installed wind capacity reached about 56 GW by March 2026 after a record 6.05 GW added in FY2025-26, generating roughly 106 billion units of electricity. Gujarat and Tamil Nadu lead the states, Suzlon and Inox Wind dominate turbine supply, and a revived 1 GW offshore tender for Tamil Nadu and Gujarat anchors the push toward 100 GW by 2030.

By Meera Iyer··11 min read

In 50 words: India's installed wind capacity hit roughly 56 GW by March 2026 after a record 6.05 GW added in FY2025-26, with generation near 106 billion units. Gujarat and Tamil Nadu lead, Suzlon and Inox Wind dominate turbine supply, and a 1 GW offshore tender anchors the 100 GW by 2030 target.

Wind is India's second-largest source of renewable electricity after solar, and 2026 has been its best year in a decade. After several flat years where solar raced ahead and wind stagnated, the sector added a record 6.05 GW in FY2025-26 to cross 56 GW of cumulative capacity — a roughly 44-46% jump in annual installations over the prior year. Generation rose even faster. Yet wind still trails its national target trajectory, depends on a handful of windy states, faces a stalled offshore programme, and sits on a vast fleet of ageing sub-2 MW turbines that need repowering. This guide explains where India's wind capacity and generation stand in 2026, which states lead, who the major turbine makers are, the state of offshore wind, how wind-solar hybrids and repowering fit in, and whether the 100 GW target is realistic.

Table of contents

  1. India's wind capacity and generation in 2026
  2. Leading wind states
  3. The major turbine OEMs: Suzlon, Inox Wind and others
  4. Offshore wind in India
  5. Wind-solar hybrid
  6. Repowering the ageing fleet
  7. The national wind target trajectory
  8. What to watch next in 2026
  9. Frequently asked questions

1. India's wind capacity and generation in 2026

India's cumulative installed wind capacity reached about 56.09 GW by the end of March 2026, according to MNRE figures cited across official and trade sources. The headline of the year was the record 6.05 GW added in FY2025-26 — the highest-ever annual wind addition, beating the previous best of around 5.5 GW set back in FY2016-17, and a near-46% increase on the prior fiscal year.

Generation kept pace and then some. Wind output rose 27.29% to around 106 billion units (roughly 106 TWh) in FY2025-26, up from about 80 TWh in FY2024-25. The faster-than-capacity growth reflects both a strong wind year and newer, higher-capacity-factor machines replacing or adding to older fleets. Wind contributes on the order of 4-5% of India's total electricity generation — modest in share but rising, and disproportionately valuable because it often peaks in the evening when solar fades.

A quick snapshot of the 2026 position:

| Metric | Value (FY2025-26) | |---|---| | Cumulative installed wind capacity | ~56.09 GW (Mar 2026) | | Annual capacity added | 6.05 GW (record) | | Year-on-year growth in additions | ~44-46% | | Wind generation | ~106 billion units (~106 TWh) | | Generation growth | +27.29% | | Share of total RE capacity | ~20% (of ~275 GW RE) |

Wind now makes up roughly a fifth of India's ~275 GW of total renewable capacity, with solar the dominant share. The structural story is that solar still installs far faster, but wind's revival in FY2026 — driven by green open access, corporate procurement and a growing hybrid pipeline — has put it back on a meaningful growth path.

2. Leading wind states

India's wind capacity is highly concentrated in the windy western and southern states. As of around April 2026, the leading states were:

| State | Installed wind capacity (approx., 2026) | |---|---| | Gujarat | ~15,782 MW | | Tamil Nadu | ~12,159 MW | | Karnataka | ~8,744 MW | | Rajasthan | ~5,410 MW | | Maharashtra | (next tier, several GW) |

Gujarat has pulled clearly ahead to become India's largest wind state, helped by strong wind resource along its coast, available land, and an aggressive hybrid and green-open-access pipeline. Tamil Nadu — historically the cradle of Indian wind, home to the Muppandal cluster — sits second and remains the densest legacy fleet, which also makes it the prime candidate for repowering (see §6). Karnataka and Rajasthan round out the leaders, with Maharashtra in the next tier.

The concentration is even starker in new additions. In FY2025-26, the bulk of new wind came from just a few states: Gujarat alone took roughly 2,965 MW (about 49% of additions), Karnataka about 1,379 MW (~23%), and Maharashtra around 643 MW (~11%). This concentration is both a strength — proven sites, grid and supply chains — and a risk, because it leaves national growth hostage to land, transmission and policy in a small number of states.

3. The major turbine OEMs: Suzlon, Inox Wind and others

India's wind turbine supply is dominated by domestic original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), led by two listed names.

Suzlon Energy is the clear market leader. By Q3 FY2026 it reported an order book of around 6.4 GW and a cumulative installed/commissioned base of roughly 15.5 GW in India (about 21.5 GW globally across 17 countries). Suzlon has been shifting its model toward turnkey delivery — its engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) share of the order book rose to about 27% by Q3 FY2026, with a stated aim of reaching 50% by 2028 — capturing more project value beyond the turbine itself. Its revenue rose around 42% year-on-year in Q3 FY2026 on the back of higher turbine deliveries.

Inox Wind is the second-largest player, with a manufacturing capacity of over 2.5 GW and an order book of roughly 3.1 GW. Together, the two companies have accounted for more than half of India's wind turbine contracting in recent years, and both are scaling toward larger 3-4 MW-class platforms suited to India's higher-hub-height, higher-capacity-factor sites.

| OEM | Order book (approx.) | Installed base (India) | Notes | |---|---|---|---| | Suzlon Energy | ~6.4 GW | ~15.5 GW | Market leader; EPC share rising to 50% by 2028 | | Inox Wind | ~3.1 GW | 2.5 GW+ mfg capacity | Clear #2; larger-platform push | | Others (GE Vernova, Envision, Senvion-legacy, etc.) | — | — | Smaller / niche presence |

Beyond the two leaders, the field includes global and regional players such as GE Vernova and Envision, plus the legacy fleets and service businesses of names like Senvion (whose Indian operations and assets passed through restructuring in earlier years). But in terms of new contracted capacity, the Indian market in 2026 is effectively a Suzlon-and-Inox duopoly at the top, which has implications for pricing, delivery timelines and the bankability of the 100 GW push.

4. Offshore wind in India

Offshore wind is India's biggest wind opportunity and its most persistent disappointment. The country has substantial offshore potential along the Gujarat and Tamil Nadu coasts, but turning that into projects has proved hard: earlier tenders for around 4.5 GW were cancelled after they failed to attract developer interest, largely because offshore costs sit well above onshore wind and solar, and the early commercial terms did not close the gap.

In 2026 the government revived the programme with a more supportive structure. The Union Cabinet approved viability gap funding (VGF) of about ₹6,853 crore to support an initial 1,000 MW of offshore capacity — split 500 MW off Gujarat and 500 MW off Tamil Nadu — alongside a separate 500 MW Contracts-for-Difference (CfD) pilot. Tenders for the Tamil Nadu and Gujarat tranches were expected to come to market around early 2026, with 25-year power purchase agreements via SECI and VGF capped on a per-MW basis to cushion the cost premium.

The longer-term ambition is far larger — India has spoken of targeting tens of gigawatts of offshore wind over the coming decade (figures of around 30 GW and up to 37 GW by 2030 have been cited in policy discussion) — but those numbers should be read as aspirational direction-setting, not committed pipeline. (Flagged: the long-run offshore targets vary by source and are aspirational; the firm, funded commitment in 2026 is the ~1 GW VGF-backed tranche plus the 500 MW CfD pilot.) Developers remain cautious, and whether the revived 1 GW tender draws competitive bids will be the real test of whether Indian offshore wind finally moves from policy to steel in the water.

5. Wind-solar hybrid

One of the most important structural shifts behind wind's 2026 revival is the rise of wind-solar hybrid projects. The two resources are naturally complementary: solar generates through the day and wind frequently peaks in the evening and at night, so co-locating them on a shared grid connection raises the utilisation of expensive transmission and delivers a smoother, more dispatchable output — increasingly bundled with storage for round-the-clock (RTC) supply.

For developers, hybrids improve the economics of new wind by sharing land, evacuation infrastructure and balancing costs across both technologies, and they fit neatly with corporate buyers and discoms wanting firmer renewable profiles. Much of the FY2026 wind pipeline in Gujarat, Karnataka and Rajasthan is hybrid or hybrid-adjacent rather than standalone wind, which is a key reason wind additions rebounded so sharply. For the underlying economics, see our companion analysis on wind-solar hybrid economics 2026.

6. Repowering the ageing fleet

A large slice of India's installed wind is old, small and inefficient. The country has roughly 25 GW of turbines below 2 MW — many at the best, windiest sites, especially in Tamil Nadu — that were installed in the 2000s and early 2010s. NIWE has estimated the repowering potential at around 25.4 GW for these sub-2 MW machines. Replacing them with modern multi-megawatt turbines on taller towers could multiply output from the same land without needing new windy sites or new transmission.

To unlock this, MNRE issued a National Repowering and Life Extension Policy for Wind Power Projects in 2023, which allows owners to repower or extend the life of older turbines, with a key performance condition that a repowered project must generate at least 1.5 times the power of the machines it replaces. In practice, progress has been slow: repowering tangles up land leases, multiple small owners per site, grid-connection agreements, and the loss of legacy feed-in tariffs, so policy alone has not been enough. Repowering remains one of the largest "hidden" sources of cheap incremental wind generation in India — and one of the slowest to materialise.

7. The national wind target trajectory

India's wind ambition is large relative to where it stands. The stated goal is around 100 GW of wind capacity by 2030, rising toward roughly 155-156 GW by 2035-36 in Central Electricity Authority (CEA) planning — the latter implying wind nearly triples from its 2026 base over a decade.

The gap is significant. To hit ~100 GW by 2030 from ~56 GW in 2026, India would need to sustain additions well above the record 6 GW of FY2026 — broadly in the high-single-digit to low-double-digit gigawatts per year. Independent outlooks are more conservative in the near term: the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) has projected cumulative Indian capacity reaching only around 63.6 GW by 2027 (within a range of roughly 59-68 GW across scenarios), implying the steep climb toward 100 GW would have to come in the back half of the decade.

| Milestone | Capacity | Source / status | |---|---|---| | FY2025-26 actual | ~56.09 GW | MNRE (achieved) | | ~2027 outlook | ~63.6 GW (59-68 GW range) | GWEC projection | | 2030 target | ~100 GW | National target | | 2035-36 | ~155-156 GW | CEA planning |

Closing that gap depends on a familiar list: faster green open access and corporate procurement, more hybrid and RTC tenders, real repowering volume, smoother land and transmission approvals, and — eventually — offshore wind contributing at scale. The FY2026 record shows the sector can accelerate; whether it can sustain that pace toward 100 GW is the open question of the decade.

8. What to watch next in 2026

  • The revived offshore tender — whether the ~1 GW Tamil Nadu and Gujarat tranches and the 500 MW CfD pilot attract competitive bids, or stall like the cancelled 4.5 GW rounds.
  • Whether FY2027 sustains 6 GW+ of additions, or reverts toward GWEC's more cautious ~63.6 GW-by-2027 trajectory.
  • Hybrid and RTC tender flow from SECI and states, which is now the main demand engine for new wind.
  • Repowering momentum in Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra as the 2023 policy is tested against real land and lease complexity.
  • OEM competition and pricing as Suzlon and Inox scale larger platforms and Suzlon pushes its EPC share toward 50%.

9. Frequently asked questions

What is India's total installed wind capacity in 2026?

About 56.09 GW as of March 2026, after a record annual addition of 6.05 GW in FY2025-26 — the highest-ever for a single year.

How much electricity does wind generate in India?

Wind generated roughly 106 billion units (~106 TWh) in FY2025-26, up about 27% year-on-year, contributing on the order of 4-5% of India's total electricity generation.

Which Indian state has the most wind capacity?

Gujarat now leads with around 15,782 MW, ahead of Tamil Nadu (~12,159 MW). Karnataka (~8,744 MW) and Rajasthan (~5,410 MW) follow, with Maharashtra in the next tier.

Who are the biggest wind turbine makers in India?

Suzlon Energy is the market leader (order book ~6.4 GW, ~15.5 GW installed in India), followed by Inox Wind (order book ~3.1 GW, 2.5 GW+ manufacturing capacity). Together they hold more than half the contracted market, with global players like GE Vernova and Envision and legacy names such as Senvion present in smaller roles.

What is the status of offshore wind in India?

Early tenders totalling ~4.5 GW were cancelled for lack of bidders. In 2026 the government revived the programme with about ₹6,853 crore in VGF for an initial 1,000 MW (500 MW each off Gujarat and Tamil Nadu) plus a 500 MW CfD pilot, with larger multi-gigawatt ambitions remaining aspirational.

What is a wind-solar hybrid?

A project that co-locates wind and solar (often with storage) on a shared grid connection. Because solar peaks by day and wind often peaks in the evening, hybrids deliver smoother, firmer output and use transmission more efficiently — a major driver of India's FY2026 wind rebound.

What is wind repowering and why does it matter in India?

Repowering replaces old, small (sub-2 MW) turbines with modern multi-megawatt machines on the same land. India has ~25 GW of such turbines and a repowering potential around 25.4 GW; a 2023 national policy requires repowered projects to generate at least 1.5x their old output, but uptake has been slow due to land, lease and grid complexity.

What is India's wind energy target?

Around 100 GW of wind by 2030, rising toward roughly 155-156 GW by 2035-36 in CEA planning — a steep climb from ~56 GW in 2026 that will require sustained additions well above the FY2026 record.

Researched and drafted with AI assistance; reviewed and edited by Meera Iyer. Browse more wind coverage and India coverage. Standards: editorial, AI disclosure.

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