India’s reservoirs can host about 102 gigawatt (GW) of floating solar capacity, according to the first comprehensive national assessment of the technology’s potential by the National Institute of Solar Energy (NISE), an autonomous institute of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE). The report titled ‘Solar PV Potential of India (Floating Solar)’ frames panels on water as a way around one of the most intractable obstacles in the solar sector — land.

The 121-page assessment, however, contains no calculation of what it would cost to realise this potential in India. Its only cost reference is a 2021 benchmark from the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which the report cites to note that floating plants typically cost about 25% more upfront than ground-mounted ones, owing to floats, anchoring and waterproofing.

“We are in discussions with the Finance Ministry to promote floating solar and agri-photovoltaics,” Santosh Kumar Sarangi, Secretary, MNRE said at a press conference on Wednesday (June 10, 2026) to launch the report. Agri-photovoltaics refer to farm beds that are sheltered by structures on which solar panels are mounted.

Acquiring land

Ground-mounted solar systems, which dominate India’s roughly 100 GW of installed solar capacity, require three to four times more area per megawatt than the panels themselves occupy. Land acquisition, which is costly, slow and prone to conflict with agriculture and habitation, has historically and continues to be a chokepoint as India pursues 500 GW of non-fossil capacity by 2030. Floating solar is “land neutral”, the report underlines.

NISE arrived at its estimate by passing India’s inland water bodies through six geospatial filters: lakes and reservoirs larger than 10 hectares, water present for at least 11 months a year, depths between 3 and 30 metres, solar irradiance above 4.5 kWh/m²/day, and proximity within 10 km of both roads and substations.

Demonstrated on Odisha’s Hirakud reservoir, the filters whittled 499 sq. km. of water down to 99.5 sq. km. of usable surface. Applied nationwide, they yielded 1,946 sq. km. of feasible area, with a self-imposed cap of 20% of any reservoir’s surface, translating to 102.18 GW. Maharashtra (16.28 GW), Madhya Pradesh (14.89 GW), Karnataka (13.69 GW), Odisha (12.81 GW) and Telangana (10.72 GW) account for the bulk.

Flagship solar park

India’s flagship is the Omkareshwar floating solar park on the Narmada river in Madhya Pradesh’s Khandwa district — at 278 MW, the country’s largest, with plans to scale to 600 MW. Yet NISE’s own field observations there recorded loosening float joints, misaligned platforms and uneven buoyancy, alongside reports from developers of electric cables breaking.

Globally, floating solar reached about 9.6 GW by 2024, nearly 90% of it in Asia. China leads, with installations such as a 120 MW plant on a fish farm in Poyang Lake; Singapore’s 1 MW Tengeh reservoir testbed has supplied much of the field’s performance data; and the Netherlands accounts for roughly three-fourths of Europe’s capacity, built largely on quarry lakes.