Wind Assets Underperform, Solar Power Takes the Lead in India’s Renewable Mix says Crisil Ratings
Crisil Ratings has recently released a report on wind and solar assets, stating that over 60 percent of wind energy assets are underperforming relative to their P90 level on average across five financial years.
August 20, 2025. By News Bureau
However, this underperformance has been counterbalanced by an increase in the share of solar power in the renewable energy mix to more than 65 percent in fiscal 2025 from around 50 percent in fiscal 2020, which has shown better operating performance against P90 benchmark and providing relative steadiness to the operating performance of the sector. Further, healthy capital structure and adequate liquidity buffers support the sector’s credit profile.
A Crisil Ratings analysis of more than 350 solar and wind projects, comprising 12.5 GW of solar assets and 8GW of wind assets, with an operational track record of at least one year, indicates as much.
The P90 metric is a critical indicator of a project's financial health, as it is commonly used by lenders and credit rating agencies to estimate the project’s future cash flows available for debt repayment.
Although wind generation has underperformed for a while, last fiscal year was the weakest performance in the past 5 years, with a mere 20 percent of capacities meeting or exceeding the P90 benchmark. In contrast, 77 percent of solar assets met their P90 level, our study showed, in line with the average of the last five fiscals.
“As high as 45 percent of wind assets lagged their P90 level by over 3 percentage points during fiscal 2025. Meanwhile, only 8 percent of solar assets lagged their P90 level by 1 percentage point, and the remaining by 1-3 percentage points. Thus, with more solar coming into the renewable sector, the blended variation in the sector’s actual operating EBITDA (wind and solar combined) against EBITDA at the P90 level was less than 10 percent,” says Ankit Hakhu, Director, Crisil Ratings.
“The leading developers have maintained a comfortable operating leverage (ratio of debt to EBITDA for operational assets) of 5-5.5 times, ensuring adequate cash-flow cushion (against debt servicing) of 1.2-1.3 times on average, to absorb the impact of lower-than-expected generation. This, along with liquidity of 1-2 quarters, has mitigated any credit shocks,” says Ankush Tyagi, Associate Director, Crisil Ratings.
Nevertheless, wind power remains essential for grid balancing as renewable energy is intermittent. Solar assets generate power during the daytime, while wind assets generate power during the evening and night, as well as during the low solar generation periods like monsoon season. Thereby, the combination of solar and wind provides a source of renewable power supply throughout the day and across the year.
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