Green energy open access: India’s MSMEs can buy clean power the way Anand sold milk

In June 2022, India’s Ministry of Power notified the Green Energy Open Access Rules. They cut the load a consumer needs to buy renewable power directly from 1 MW to 100 kW, a 90% cut in the entry ticket.

4 years on, the market has scaled fast. Mercom India counts 36 GW of open access solar by June 2026, including a record 3 GW in a single quarter.

We look at this market from 2 seats. One of us advises promoters and companies on growth, efficiency and transactions at Prequate Advisory (an elite boutique investment bank and consulting firm). The other researches and publishes independently on India’s public finance. From both seats, the next phase is clear: the rules are written, and India’s industrial mid-market is ready for its turn.

The market has more than quadrupled since 2022

Annual additions rose from 1.3 GW in 2021 and 2.5 GW in 2022 to 3.2 GW in 2023, then to 7.7 GW in 2024 and 7.8 GW in 2025. The first half of 2026 alone added nearly 6 GW, up 42% on the same period of 2025.

The installed base stood at 7.7 GW at the end of 2022 and reached 36 GW by June 2026. That’s more than 4.6 times in 3.5 years.

Demand is broad. Mercom names cement, IT, data centres and pharmaceuticals among the buyers. All of it sits inside a national milestone: on 30 June 2025, non-fossil sources made up 242.78 GW of India’s 484.82 GW of installed capacity, crossing 50% 5 years ahead of the 2030 goal.

23 states and union territories moved in under 3 years

Electricity sits on the Concurrent List of India’s Constitution, so each state had to write the central rules into its own regulations. 11 states and union territories adopted them in 2023, 11 more in 2024 and Rajasthan in 2025, taking the total to 23 of 29 by May 2025.

States keep improving them. In 2026, Delhi’s regulator amended its green open access regulations so that consumers can combine connections to reach 100 kW.

Buyers are using the system. The national registry logged 2,216 consumer applications between 2021 and 2025, led by Tamil Nadu (737), Uttar Pradesh (356) and Andhra Pradesh (197). The single-window portal, launched in November 2022, must decide within 15 days, or the application is deemed approved.

100 kW puts the mid-market within reach

A 100 kW load running 8 hours a day for 300 days uses 2.4 lakh units of electricity a year. That’s a modest factory floor.

The rules go further. Captive consumers face no minimum load at all, and a 2023 amendment lets a consumer add up connections at different locations to reach 100 kW.

The lower bar was expected to help MSMEs. Under India’s revised definition, in force since 1 April 2025, a medium enterprise has up to ₹125 crore of investment and ₹500 crore of turnover. That band, and the firms just above it, is India’s industrial mid-market.

Why the window is now

2 deadlines shape the economics. Mercom reports that developers have been commissioning fast ahead of the phased reduction in the interstate transmission charge waiver and the ALMM List-II sourcing rule, whose open access deadline was deferred to the end of 2026.

Large buyers have moved first. Every quarter a mid-sized firm waits, it competes for the same developers and transmission capacity, probably on less generous terms.

Customers are adding pull. India’s largest listed companies report their energy and greenhouse gas footprints under BRSR Core, and SEBI now lets them report the same for their largest suppliers from FY 2025-26, on a voluntary basis. Green power is one of the quickest ways for a mid-sized supplier to cut its electricity emissions.

The bottleneck is the deal, and it’s solvable

Power Line’s 2025 review found the remaining hurdles for smaller commercial and industrial buyers are practical: awareness, in-house technical capacity, bankability, financing and a shortage of developers willing to aggregate demand.

Each is a deal problem. A developer signs a long power purchase agreement and borrows against it. One 300 kW buyer means a small contract and a credit file the lender reads from scratch, and 20 such buyers mean 20 credit files.

So today’s terms suit the 10 MW buyer. The fix is to make 20 small buyers look like 1.

What Anand’s dairy farmers worked out in 1946

Gujarat’s dairy farmers once faced the mirror image of this problem. Each family had too little milk to bargain with the contractors who bought it. In Kaira district they formed their own union, registered on 14 December 1946. It began pasteurising in June 1948 with 2 village societies and about 250 litres a day.

The engine was pooling. A shared collection point turned many small, uneven sellers into one supplier a city could plan around, and Amul credits the Anand pattern with helping India become the world’s largest milk producer.

The group captive is India’s collection point for power

India’s power rules already contain that collection point. Users who together own at least 26% of a plant and consume at least 51% of its output, in proportion to their stakes, qualify as captive users, and captive users face no minimum load.

So 20 firms in one industrial cluster, each drawing 250 kW, can co-own a 5 MW solar or hybrid plant through one company. The developer and the lender see one project with 20 buyers behind it, and each firm draws power in line with its stake.

4 policy moves to bring the mid-market in

Each one builds on rules India already has:

• Cluster aggregators. MSME associations in manufacturing clusters can set up group captive companies for members, with one technical team filing every application on the national portal.
• One standard contract. State nodal agencies can publish a model power purchase agreement for buyers below 1 MW, so one lawyer reviews the terms for a whole cluster.
• Pooled credit support. A partial guarantee from SIDBI on a pool of mid-sized buyers would let developers price the pool’s risk once.
• Registry data by load size. The Green Open Access Registry already reports applications by state. Reporting them by contracted load would show how fast the 100 kW to 1 MW band is growing.

Conclusion: start with one cluster

India cut the green power threshold from 1 MW to 100 kW, 23 states and union territories adopted the rules by May 2025, and open access solar reached 36 GW by June 2026.

The next gains sit with mid-sized firms, and pooling is how they get there: group captive companies, a standard contract, pooled guarantees and better registry data, put in place while the transmission waiver phases down.

Anand started with 2 village societies and 250 litres a day. A mid-market green power pool can start the same way, one cluster at a time.

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