On a salt-crusted plain near the border with Pakistan, India is assembling a power plant so vast it can be seen from space. The Khavda Renewable Energy Park is designed to eclipse every existing solar and wind complex, turning an empty desert into a 24-hour clean power factory. Far from signalling fatigue, the project shows the green transition accelerating in places that once sat at the margins of the global energy map.
Spanning hundreds of square kilometres, with tens of gigawatts of planned capacity, Khavda is not just another solar farm but a test of whether industrial-scale renewables can rival fossil fuels on reliability, cost and geopolitical weight. I see it as a live experiment in whether the world’s biggest emerging economies can leapfrog straight into a cleaner grid without repeating the carbon-heavy path of China and the US.
The desert megaproject redefining scale
The Khavda Renewable Energy Park rises from the Rann of Kutch in the western Indian state of Gujarat, where the government has carved out a dedicated zone for what it calls The Gujarat Hybrid Renewable Energy Park. Official plans describe it as a hybrid complex of solar and wind facilities, also known as the Khavda Solar Park, that will eventually stretch across a landscape larger than many countries, with investment running into tens of thousands of crore rupees, or about US$18 billion, according to Gujarat. State documents describe it as a flagship project intended to anchor India’s long term shift away from coal and imported fuel.
Different official and corporate accounts give a sense of the sheer footprint. One government note says the Khavda Renewable Energy Park is Spread across approximately 800 square kilometers and aims to generate 37 g of 100% eco-friendly power, while another detailed account describes Khavda, in India’s far west, as Spanning 726 sq km, about seven times larger than the city of Paris. Even the more conservative corporate estimate, which puts the solar park’s land area at five times that of Paris, or 538 sq km, would still make it the largest clean energy facility of its kind anywhere.
How Khavda is being built to run around the clock
What sets Khavda apart is not only its size but its attempt to solve renewables’ biggest weakness, intermittency, at the project level. Developers are deliberately pairing vast solar arrays with long rows of wind turbines so that the site can generate power through the day and night, using the desert’s own rhythms. Reports from the site describe how, as the sun sets over Khavda, At night, wind speeds rise, allowing turbines to take over as solar generation drops, turning the complex into a kind of relay race between technologies that keeps electricity flowing to the grid, as captured in images of the Khavda renewable energy park.
To make that work at scale, the project is also investing in storage. One of the World’s Largest BESS Projects is already taking shape here, with Sineng Electric Delivers 576MW PCS for Khavda Energy Park, a sign that battery systems are being woven into the design from the start rather than bolted on later, according to PCS suppliers. That combination of solar, wind and batteries is what allows backers to argue that Khavda can behave more like a conventional power station, delivering firm capacity rather than just variable green electrons.
Speed, capacity and the race with fossil fuels
Khavda’s backers are racing not just against climate deadlines but against the inertia of existing coal fleets. Actual construction at the site began in April 2023 and, within about nine months, solar power was already flowing to the grid, a pace that would be unthinkable for a new coal or nuclear plant of comparable size, according to project timelines described in Actual construction reports. Wind generation is being phased in alongside, with developers targeting several gigawatts of new capacity each year as transmission lines and substations catch up.
At full build-out, the Khavda Renewable Energy Park is expected to generate 30 gigawatts of power, a figure that appears repeatedly in corporate statements and is framed as enough to transform India’s grid, according to descriptions that call it the largest clean energy facility now under construction, with a land area five times that of Paris, or 538 sq km, and a planned 30 GW capacity in 30 GW plans. State officials go even further, saying the park aims to generate 37 g of 100% eco-friendly power, a sign of how Khavda has become a political symbol of Gujarat’s green ambitions in Gujarat Hybrid Renewable narrative.
The coal billionaire, the borderland and the geopolitics of clean power
Behind the project sits a corporate player whose history underscores the complexity of the energy transition. A coal billionaire is using Its clean energy unit AGEL to build the sprawling solar and wind power plant in the western Indian state of Gujarat at a cost that runs into the billions, a pivot that illustrates how fossil fuel fortunes are being redeployed into renewables, according to profiles of AGEL. That history has drawn scrutiny, but it also reflects a broader trend in which incumbents, not just start-ups, are driving some of the largest clean energy investments.
Geography adds another layer of meaning. India’s renewable energy park is a short drive from the Pakistan border, where At the park’s site thousands of labourers are installing panels and turbines in a zone that has long been defined by security concerns rather than climate policy, according to on-the-ground accounts from India and Pakistan border coverage. Indian officials openly frame the Gujarat Hybrid Renewable Energy Park as a project that could rival China and the US in clean power scale, a point made in explainers on how india is racing to build the world’s largest renewable energy park, a US$18 billion project that could rival China and the in clean energy capacity.
Why Khavda matters for the global green transition
For all the talk of “green fatigue” in some Western capitals, Khavda offers a very different story from the ground. This is Khavda, where India is building the world’s largest renewable energy project, Spanning 726 sq km and designed to pump out tens of gigawatts of power, a scale that few other countries are attempting in a single site, according to detailed descriptions of Khavda. The Khavda Renewable Energy Park is expected to generate 30 GW while also anchoring new factories for manufacturing solar panels and batteries, turning a remote desert into an industrial cluster, as highlighted in reports that describe it as Spanning 726 sq km, about seven times larger than the city of Paris, and tied to new clean-tech supply chains in Spanning coverage.
Khavda also helps reset expectations about what is technically and politically possible. Lists of the largest solar PV power plants in operation worldwide show how quickly India has climbed the rankings, with new projects in Gujarat poised to overtake long-time leaders as capacity is commissioned, according to global comparisons of largest solar plants. State updates say the park aims to generate 37 g of 100% eco-friendly power, reinforcing the message that this is not a pilot but a central plank of Gujarat’s energy future, as set out in Spread briefings. When I look at Khavda in the context of other mega-projects, from the Gujarat Hybrid Renewable Energy Park’s official blueprint to the way Adani Green Energy commissions 480 MW blocks of solar and wind capacity on track to complete the world’s largest RE park at Khavda, as noted in commissions, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the green shift is not only alive but moving fastest in the very regions that once lagged behind.
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