India has immense potential of solar energy though there are regional variations in its development. Elaborate.

India receives 250-300 sunny days a year with insolation of 4-7 kWh per sq m per day; the National Institute of Solar Energy estimates a potential of about 748 GW. Installed solar capacity has crossed 100 GW (2025), yet its spread is strikingly uneven.

The endowment

• The arid and semi-arid west — Rajasthan, Gujarat, Ladakh — combines the highest insolation with cheap wasteland, ideal for utility-scale parks with high capacity utilisation.
• Peninsular plateaus (Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh) add strong insolation with better grid density.

Regional variations and their causes

• Rajasthan (Bhadla park, about 2,245 MW), Karnataka (Pavagada, about 2,050 MW), Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh (Rewa, 750 MW) dominate installed capacity.
• Eastern and north-eastern states lag because of monsoonal cloudiness, lower insolation, fragmented and scarce land, hilly terrain and weaker transmission networks; densely populated agricultural plains such as Bihar and West Bengal cannot spare land for large parks.
• Policy and institutional gaps widen the divide: proactive solar policies, land facilitation and stronger DISCOM finances in the west and south versus delayed payments and weak evacuation infrastructure elsewhere.

Bridging the divide

• Rooftop solar under PM Surya Ghar Muft Bijli Yojana (2024) suits land-scarce, cloudier states; PM-KUSUM decentralises solar to farms through pumps and feeder solarisation, turning farmers into producers.
• Floating solar on reservoirs (Omkareshwar, Ramagundam) bypasses the land constraint; agrivoltaics allows dual land use.
• The Green Energy Corridor and inter-regional transmission let solar-rich states power deficit regions, while PLI-backed domestic module manufacturing and the International Solar Alliance strengthen the wider ecosystem.

India's solar story is thus one of immense but geographically concentrated potential. Decentralised, land-neutral models and stronger evacuation can turn a western-southern success into a truly national one.